The World Business

Archive for November, 2010

Get back out your pen and paper you used to take notes from Part 1 of online marketing strategies for small businesses.  Today we’re going to cover the same Basics of Getting Clear, Inform & Educate and Follow up.

Today, however, we’re going to jump into the How-To of each of these topics and how it relates to your business.

So shut the door, turn the TV off and let’s get started…online marketing strategies for small businesses that you can begin to use TODAY

Getting Clear:  You now understand that not everyone with a pulse is your target market.  To make it even clearer, I’m going to help you determine who your market is and how to effectively reach them.

Let’s use Dentistry as an example.  And even more specific, let’s use implant dentistry.  While we’re at it, let’s use implant dentistry in Boise, ID.

The first thing you’re going to want to do is Keyword Research.  Keywords are the words or phrases your potential customer is going to type into the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing).

You’re going to use Google’s free keyword tool to determine what gets searched and where you need to spend your marketing time.

After some basic research, we find that the term “implant dentistry Boise, ID” is WIDE open.

There is virtually NO competition for that specific Keyword Phrase.  Not only did we learn that there is no competition, but Google has given an additional 199 relevant keywords.

This means, according to Google, there are an additional 199 keywords that are relevant to “implant dentistry Boise, ID”

Looks like you would have PLENTY of material for your marketing efforts.

Inform & Educate:  Now remember from Part 1, we’re not trying to sell your prospects yet.  We just want to make sure your prospect is informed.

So, how are you supposed to inform your prospect?

That’s the easy part.  You’ve already found 200 relevant keywords to talk about.  Let’s choose one and go with it…“Dental Implants vs Bridges”

After your research you have found that “Dental Implants vs Bridges” is searched almost 2,000 times every month.  And, of the nearly 600,000 search results, there are less than 5,000 of those search results that are optimized for this keyword.

All of that equals AWESOME.

So where to from here?  Write an article that is specifically about “Dental Implants vs Bridges”

Considering if you are a dentist, you should have a GREAT understanding of this topic.  Remember, this is an informative article.  And, it’s best to keep your article to around 500 words.

Make sure you use your keyword 3-5 times throughout your article.

Insert a link into your article that takes your prospect DIRECTLY to a page of your website that talks about “Dental Implants & Bridges”

You are going to take that article and distribute it to multiple different Article Directories such as Ezinearticles.com and Articlesbase.com.

To further saturate that particular keyword, you can also do a video with the exact same content from your article.  You can also turn the content into a blog post.

Once your prospect is on your website, you will offer them more detailed information about what they are looking for.  This is done by them “opting in” to receive more information.

As soon as your prospect has opted in, Congratulations, you just generated your own lead!

But wait a second, we don’t stop there….

Follow Up:  Face it; more than 90% of your business is going to be done through follow up.

It’s a good thing for you that you have your prospects name, email address and possibly a phone number.

With services like Aweber and Constant Contact, you can always be in touch with your list of prospects.

In fact, you can have your follow up messages set up to go out on specific dates and times that say your specific message.

So, everyone who is on your prospects list will receive the right MESSAGE at the right TIME.

It’s like you being able to do multiple consultations all at once.  This, my friend, is true leverage!

I’m sure your beginning to see the power available to you.  This is just a quick taste of some basic online marketing strategies for small businesses.  Make it a point for you to develop and distribute 2-3 new pieces of content each week.  After you’ve done this for 60 days, you will dramatically increase the amount of views your business gets.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention something…THIS IS ALL FREE!!

Sure, you may have spent some time to create the content.  And heck, you could even have an assistant produce the content.  But other than that, articles, videos, blogs and such cost NO money.

So get out there you small business owner.  Today is the day and NOW is the time.  Don’t bunker down and do nothing, stand up and be heard.

The 2008 crash caused a lot of soul searching among American experts, particularly economists. One famous academic was heard to say, “Everything I’ve been teaching, for all these years, was wrong.” A lot of businesses have also been re-assessing, and the state of the American job market is hardly a secret, with a new need for upgrading the domestic economy and career environment to meet the demand of competition and income requirements. Every form of employment market function, from leadership training to performance training and team building, is now under the microscope.

The gigantic American economy, the biggest in human history, was well insulated until recently. It could ignore new trends, and capital flowed through the markets regardless. That’s all over. The business and economic culture which created 20^th century America is utterly obsolete in the 21^st century.

Notwithstanding the all too well known vagaries of American politics and domestic policies, many of which are as responsible for America’s latest walk off a financial cliff as the Rip Van Business motif, real upgrades are now essential.

The High Road approach

One of the first of these new initiatives is the High Road, which began its existence in the somewhat unlikely setting of the Rust Belt, America’s Elephant’s Graveyard. This decaying museum of an environment was the home of a machinery making business, Bucyrus International Inc, which looked like it was about to follow its neighbors into oblivion. It was in debt up to its grandchildren, losing money, and losing orders. It was uncompetitive, and like many old style businesses, quite out of touch with the market realities.

The solution: Incentives. The company stopped playing office and started paying its boilermakers, top tradespeople, top dollar. Productivity skyrocketed, and when you’re producing top quality product, that means you’re making big money. This company is now also offering apprenticeships, hoping to get more local talent. From being half a billion in the red it went to a billion in the black, and improving.

The New Economy approach

The New Economy is all about low overheads, and outsourcing to the best people in the world. The global job market is now truly global, but if you consider the amount of untapped expertise in the US, you can see a huge potential, and an extremely cost-effective way of doing business. Outsourcing is often accused of being the death of the American worker, but it could also easily be the American worker’s salvation. New economy jobs are based on skills, not merely mindless office rituals and turning people into high stress crash dummies for X number of days a week. New economy workers are contractors, and interestingly it was the professionals that first jumped ship into these working modes. New Economy workers are businesses themselves, and they’re extremely highly motivated. They don’t even need business equipment, they supply their own, usually much better, pro-standard, equipment.

Management training is also changing to meet this new business mode. The new frontier needs people that can think on their feet, not on their backsides. This is the mode that will get America running again.

If you want to invest your money, gold is probably the best investment for these days. The gold has the most stable price over several decades. It does not get affected by the world crises and also oil prices. The world worst recession cannot even force the price of gold to go down. This gold stability will continue for decades to go or even for centuries. The price of gold tends to rise from time to time and it makes huge profits if you buy gold now and sell it in the future.

To know more about currency gold, you can open Swissamerica.com. This website contains the most comprehensive information and also news about gold market. By opening this website, you will know every change and also progress that happens in the gold market accurately. The website always has the latest info that can tell you what happens in the economic world. You can also get info about dollar crash from this website too. If you think this website useful in helping you to invest your money in gold, you have to open it and read all articles here. Do not forget to bookmark it on your computer to ensure that you can get back to it in the future.

Therefore, it is time for you to do smart investment. If you are kind a person who is afraid to take risk in investment, gold investment is your best choice. You still can be fashionable by wearing your gold jewelries while you are investing your money. You will be surprised to know that the price of your gold will be doubled even tripled when you sell it in the next couple of years. Whatever the form – the coins, the jewelries, the gold bullion – the gold will give many profits in your investment.

Blog Themes – How to Add Creativity to Your Blog

Themes are a sort of subliminal background to a blog. They provide a reading environment, and sometimes interesting, or not so interesting, features. The trouble with themes is choosing something which is right for your blog and provides a good platform for your SEO, article range and includes operational functions. Whether your blog is about car insurance or goldfish, the motto here is to stick to the game plan, and integrate the theme with the whole blog efficiently.

Simpler, home made content, or what, for your blog?

Templates have exactly one thing going for them- They’re functional. They provide a consistent background and built in features. Fine, but in terms of market image, many templates leave a lot to be desired. If you’ve seen some of the themes used by graphic artists, you’ll know what’s possible. Even basic web pages can have quite incredible backgrounds.

These backgrounds are simply slotted on as images and overwritten. They’re interesting, effective, and can also help in terms of the color scheme. Some color schemes are a bit too “corporate”. Others can best be described as staggeringly unambitious, very ho-hum non-efforts.

To give some idea of the issues, a basic scan of a good image, as a text background, can blow any monotone mess out of the water. Many themes include paper, solid color, wood grain and other features which look nice enough at first but become repetitive, un-variegated, and let’s face it, dull.

The business theme is fine for business. It says “We’re here to sell.” It has no particular claims to artistic or any other sort of merit, and is simply functional. For blogs, however, that’s often well short of what’s needed, particularly in very articulate blogs. Blogs are individualized by nature, and a “Me too” theme like a business theme can be exactly what people need to see to go straight back to their search and keep looking.

Theme madness?

Themes can be overstated, oversold and overcrowded with content. They can also be underdone to the point at which the reader decides the blog is uninteresting or that the blogger’s not trying too hard. (The difference between minimalism and bone lazy is also debatable, but if you’ve seen one of those “wastelands with text” you’d probably agree that visually those themes aren’t too encouraging.)

The trouble with conventional wisdom about themes is that everything is supposed to be solved with a theme. Not likely. Themes used properly are an asset, but as a sort of cure-all for blog content issues and antiquated features, they leave a lot to be desired. The problem is that themes, when standardized, tend to become one of the crowd. That’s lousy marketing, and having a few mindless graphic patterns swirling around doesn’t help a lot, either.

Getting out of the theme dilemma

There’s another person affected by themes- You, the blogger. “Great, terrific, exciting, whatever”, you have to look at these things. The line of least resistance, for once, is the line of greatest reward. Find something which really appeals to you strongly. Something you can look at forever. It can be a picture of your favorite film star, a series of cultural icons, just make sure you can look at it and love it.