Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on August 11, 2010 under Small Biz and Entrepreneurship,Small Biz Marketing,Small Biz News,Small Biz Webinars | 
A Free Small Business Webinar on Starting your Business off on the Right Foot with Email Marketing! 
The Pew Internet and American Life Project, says e-mail remains the number-one online activity of Americans and can deliver a higher return on investment than methods such as direct mail and advertising. So as a small business, it’s important to capitalize on this trend! By adopting the right strategies and practices now, you can maximize the inbox to capitalize on acquiring new customers and retaining current ones.
We invite you to spend some valuable time with BizCentral USA and learn step-by-step effective strategies for implementing successful email marketing campaigns.
Topics of Interest:
• Email Marketing Fundamentals
• Design and Layout Best Practices
• What you Don’t see That can Make or Break your Campaign
• Building your Email Lists
• Complying with Regulations & Getting your Emails Delivered
Join us August 17th, 2010 from 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm (EST) and Learn how to maximize the inbox and start reaching thousands with one click!
Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on July 7, 2010 under Small Biz Marketing,Small Biz News,Small Biz Webinars |
A free small business webinar on how to set the foundation for your small business brand identity!
What exactly does “branding” mean? How does it affect a small business like yours? What do people think of when they hear your company’s name? Learn the answers to these questions and more!
Brands were originally developed as labels of ownership. Today, it is what they mean to people that matters much more. Powerful brands can drive success in competitive markets, increase product awareness, and indeed become the company’s most valuable assets.
We invite you to spend some valuable time with BizCentral USA, and learn how to effectively reach your audience by strategically branding your small business!
Topics of Interest:
• What is Branding & Why is it Important to Your Small Business
• 3 Simple Branding Concepts
• Branding Guidelines
• Implementing Your Brand Strategy
Join us on Tuesday July 13, 2010 from 3:00 P.M. – 4:00 P.M. for a free small business webinar!
Posted by Jennifer Nelson on June 24, 2010 under Small Biz and Entrepreneurship,Small Biz Marketing,Small Biz News |
On average 57 million adult Americans read blogs, which is good news for small businesses trying to generate awareness about their products and services. If you’re writing blogs to generate additional sales, you’re not alone. Approximately 53% of professional bloggers are interested in attracting new clients from blogging.
Persons trying to generate income from their blog write 37,240,000 blogs each year or 28% of all blogs. Of these 54% are Part-Timers, 32% are Self-Employed Persons, and 14% are Corporate Writers. Evaluating positive and negative cashflows, the mean profits for blogs with reported revenues is $57,369.20. That’s a lot of money for an activity most blog writers spend about 10 hours a week doing.
Technorati has indexed more than 133,000,000 blogs since 2002 and around 77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann. According to recent data 57% of blog readers are male, 48%, were under 30, and 82% were longtime Internet users or had more than six years’ experience online. Blog writers appear to mirror these trends, as two-thirds are male between the ages of 18 and 44. Over 75% have college degrees and 40% have graduate degrees.
Blogs are decidedly content driven but a growing emphasis is being placed on having more multimedia friendly blogs. Over 82% of respondents say that they post photos to their blog, making images the most popular form of multimedia. Of those who use media other than text, 73% say that that they create the photos, video, or audio they post themselves about half of the time. Only 13% of all respondents say that they never post any images/videos/audio to their blogs, preferring to just use text. With just-text blogs becoming the minority in today’s blogosphere, it’s important to use appropriate multimedia to make your corporate blog exciting.
Bloggers participate in an average of five activities to drive traffic to their blogs. Which is most successful? Well the jury is still out but Twitter is definitely in the top five. Blogs with greater than 100 page views a day received on average 83% of their page views from Twitter referrals. This referral percentage was constant as the audience size of the blog increased. In other words, the faster the growth of a blog, the more important Twitter became in promoting it.
It is important to keep up with your blogs statistics to see how people are finding your blog and how often they are reading it. There are many free blog statistic softwares available to blog writers but the five most commonly used are:
1. Google Analytics
2. StatCounter
3. SiteMeter
4. AWStats
5. MyBlogLog
Blogging is not just about numbers, traffic, or hits to your website. It is a great tool for small business marketing. Be careful to avoid the trap of writing for search engines rather than human beings. Blogs that read too much like an advertisement will be less successful than blogs that give your readers information they need to know to make informed purchasing decisions. Build your credibility first and traffic later. Traffic is a direct reflection of writing good content and smart advertising of your blog. Contact BizCentral USA today about setting up a blog for your website so you can take advantage of these exciting statistics.
Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on June 8, 2010 under Small Biz and Entrepreneurship,Small Biz Marketing,Small Biz News |
With the expansion of social networking phenomenon online, many small business owners question whether they should utilize these sites for small business marketing. If so, which sites would be the most useful to grow a business? This article will outline a few of the more popular social networking sites online and show the benefits of each site.
Currently, Facebook is one of the fastest growing and most popular social networking sites. According to Facebook.com, “There are more than 400 million active users and 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.” The sheer number of members that Facebook has can generate great exposure for your small business. You may want to consider establishing or joining a network on Facebook based on your small business or industry category to tap into people’s affinity for the topic. By having a specific category, you will be able to keep the online interactions focused on your industry, not all of the other online clutter.
While Facebook has the greatest number of members, many professionals believe that LinkedIn is the best overall site for both networking and human resources purposes. According to Linkedin.com, “There are over 65 million LinkedIn members across the globe.” One of the main differences that sets LinkedIn apart from other social networking sites online is the fact that when you are creating your online profile, you can create a resume and then link to other like-minded professionals.
Twitter is a new type of social networking that allows you to post updates (called Tweets) as often as you want (and limited to 140 characters). When you follow other people on Twitter, you see their tweets. When they follow you, they see your tweets. It is estimated that there were 18 million Twitter users in 2009. It is also estimated that 60% of Twitter users abandon their accounts within their first month of use.
Twitter can be useful for small business marketing, allowing another channel to connects current and potential customers with your product or brand. Twitter can be used as a traffic generation tool. The placement of links within profiles and conversations can direct visitors to a specific website and is especially powerful if you pitch to early adopters and influencers. Twitter can also be used as a lead acquisition tool, however it is very difficult to target a specific subset of the general demographic and determine their level of potential interest.
No matter which social networking site or combination of sites you choose to utilize to start business, one important thing to consider is that these social networking sites should be used in conjunction with your other online presences. They should not be used exclusively in place of other online presences such as websites and blogs. If you do use these sites properly and link them to your other online presences, you will establish a great small business marketing tool to help you grow your brand, your online presence, and your small business as a whole.
