Entrepreneurial Spirit In America

August 4, 2009 By 1 Comment

entrepreneurThe Wall Street Journal’s Boss Nation ran an excellent column recently pouring over Census data and how it relates to businesses and workers here in America. I had a feeling we were heading towards an Entrepreneurial Nation but boy, we are steamrolling in that direction. The current economic free fall (well, hopefully at least the free fall is over) has only exasperated this trend.

Here are a few snippets pulled from the column:

–The Census data says there were roughly eight million self-employed Americans in 1980 and today there are 10 million. non-employer firms topped 20 million whereas this number was 15 million in the 1990s.

–Self-employed women workers went from 27 percent in 1973 to 39 percent in 2003.

–It’s extremely difficult to obtain financing from a bank today but entrepreneurs can incorporate, establish a logo, start a Web site and churn out your own email at a very reasonable cost through the help of college student interns, DIY resources (ahem, UnderstandingMarketing) and other contractors such as yourself.

–More people are also starting their own business or consultancy on the side even if they still have a full-time job. For many this is the only way to take that leap but it can be very exhausting and possibly damaging to family life.

The important thing is to realize what it’s going to take to get up and running. Beyond that, think of everything you need to be successful. Rely on #smbiz Twitter chats to meet and learn from other accomplished entrepreneurs that can be a great support system. If your business will involve building a network of other professionals in different areas, build that network now so that it’s ready to rock and roll once you launch.

Figure out who will be your support system in areas like tech support, accounting, taxes, legal, marketing, sales, business development, PR, social media, blogging, operations and distribution. It’s impossible for any entrepreneur to be a true expert in every one of these areas, so get your support system in place.

Here is the full column in The Wall Street Journal. And here are several more resources to help you get started:

iContact

Search Engine Optimization Bible

Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur

Balance Sheet Basics: Financial Management for Nonfinancial Managers

Facebook Marketing

The One Minute Entrepreneur

The PR Toolkit

The Publicity Handbook

QuickBooks accounting software

Yahoo! search marketing

Web domain registration

Web Hosting Services

Filed Under: Marketing & PR Strategies Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Virtual Assistants Benefit Small Business

July 30, 2009 By 8 Comments

writing1With small business owners and entrepreneurs constantly in search of extra help yet struggling to maintain a budget, hiring a “Virtual Assistant” might just be a great idea. But what is a Virtual Assistant, how can they help a small business and, more importantly, exactly how much will it cost you? And can a Virtual Assistant be located anywhere in the country – or world – to offer their services? Can they help with social media, marketing, bookkeeping, and other critical areas of your business? These are all very important questions and we want to help you get some answers.

Join the #smbiz Twitter chat on Tuesday, August 4, from 8-9 pm ET, when we dedicate the entire hour on working with a Virtual Assistant. We’ve got a great panel of experts lined up to give us all kinds of answers.

Michelle Mangen (@mmangen), Dawn Pigoni (@dawntrenee), Raven Howard (@virtualraven) and Tara Nelson (@tara_nelson) are all well-known and highly talented Virtual Assistants. They will serve as our guest experts for the #smbiz chat and answer everything we ever wanted to know about what it means to have a Virtual Assistant in our lives.

Filed Under: #smbiz Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Marketing To Women

July 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

guerrilla_marketing1As a small business owner or entrepreneur, do you take gender into consideration when developing design and/or content for any of your online or offline marketing, including the design and content of your Web site or blog? This question can also be applied to any social media marketing efforts in place within your company (you’ll learn why in a few moments).

If you don’t, a new study suggests you may want to. In fact, this study goes as far as to suggest you may want to significantly limit your social media marketing efforts to men altogether (we here at UnderstandingMarketing.com aren’t ready to go that far – not just because the author of this blog post happens to be a man).

As reported recently in BusinessWeek, a new study by information gathering service, Rapleaf, was conducted to seek answers on who’s using social media more – men or women. In fact, more than 13 million people took part in this survey. It found that not only do women far outweigh men in social media usage, but women between 35-50 are actually the fastest-growing segment. Surprisingly, this demographic scored high on MySpace.

Boiling down the reasons, social media is,well, social. Men tend to use computers and the Internet to gather intelligence, which is why they scored high on LinkedIn use. Women, on the other hand, prefer to use computers and the Internet to build their social circles, create relationships and communicate with friends. Sites such as RockYou and Slide were pointed to as being popular social sites that are designed almost entirely to and for women. Sites like Sheconomy are even designed to target women in marketing efforts.

So this information raises a good question. In fact it raises a lot of questions for any small business person or entrepreneur designing online and offline marketing programs (since the two are growing more integrated when done correctly). Think about how your message and call to action is different to men and women and even women of color. What kind of language and words should you use? And how should you use that language? What about the look and feel of your marketing and social media campaigns? How should you design your campaigns and with what colors? These are all important questions for all marketing efforts, like e-newsletters, brochures, direct mail, online marketing, loyalty programs, rewards and incentives, and even PR efforts.

Keep in mind that some products/services will always be skewed towards one gender vs. another. But the days of drawing a line in the sand are over, for the most part, and both genders are involved in just about every industry. The key is understanding marketing in terms of reaching both genders effectively, especially through social media marketing.

How do you approach gender in your marketing and social media efforts? Please share your thoughts here.

Filed Under: Marketing & PR Strategies Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

The ROI of PR for Small Business

July 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Business Graphs and ChartsA wonderful colleague of UnderstandingMarketing.com, John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing, recently blogged about the Return On Investment (ROI) of social networking for small business. In his blog post, and as to be expected, he mentions that virtually every small business owner and entrepreneur asks about measuring the success of a social networking or social media campaign. Small business owners are numbers people, and rightfully so. We’re in business to make money.

Mr. Jantsch goes on to then make an excellent point on the subject. When considering the ROI of social networking campaigns, it’s equally fair to examine the ROI of any in-person networking event. Surely any small business owner will admit that there can be great reason to attend many in-person networking events. Is it easy to credit direct sales to those networking events? Sometimes yes but more often, no. The same can be applied to social networking strategies and campaigns since they’re heavily reliant on relationships fostered, opportunities created and customers educated about you and your business – all in a virtual environment.

One could arguably make the exact same comparison to PR activities, campaigns and strategies. In general, PR isn’t meant to be a leads generator but instead an awareness generator. Does awareness alone lead to sales? Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. However, much of that awareness can be described as “buzz.” And since the majority of small business owners are constantly saying they’d like more “buzz” about their company, well, PR is a big part in helping to accomplish this. But it’s not necessarily going to lead directly to a sale today. Instead, your PR efforts work in concert with an integrated marketing campaign (direct response, brochures, email marketing and social networking) to create sales today AND tomorrow.When a prospective customer reads about you in the local newspaper one day and receives an email marketing message a week later, there’s a good chance you’ll get a better response from that customer because he/she will have already become familiar with you through the PR efforts. In a nutshell, over time PR can quickly turn a cold lead into a warm lead.

Getting a great profile story on your company in the local television news may or may not lead to direct sales – much like meeting several people at your last networking event may not lead to direct sales. Generating buzz is exactly that – excitement. It’s this excitement that helps create more sales as time goes on.

Additional resources:

Working with the Media

The Publicity Handbook

Filed Under: Public Relations Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Easy Designs For Small Business & Bloggers

July 25, 2009 By 2 Comments

iwork09For any small business owner or blogger working on a Mac, try iWork design software to create easy and impressive documents, spreadsheets, presentations, page designs and more. iWork can make your life incredibly easier and you’ll be amazed at everything it can do for you. Small business owners and entrepreneurs will love its ability to create all working documents and spreadsheets with exciting and eye-inspiring designs.

Bloggers and social media enthusiasts will love iWork’s ability to design pages and design a blog with its simple and easy page layout application, which combines the power of a writer and designer all in one.

Here’s a rundown of iWork design software’s features:

–iWork offers a neat Outline option that helps you structure your ideas so you can organize your thoughts as you create your document. This feature is drag-and-drop friendly with collapsable topics and subtopics.

–You can mail merge by your address book or specific groups of numbers. This way you can create simple invitations with addresses, invoices, mailing lists and letters.

–Not a great designer? iWork design software does all the work for you with over 180 pre-loaded templates for reports, letters, cards, flyers, brochures, and many more. Create impressive marketing materials and other designs with the template tool without having to come up with the look all by yourself.

–If you’re creating a professional paper, document or journal article, iWork is compatible with MathType 6.1, which allows you to do all kinds of equations, and EndNote X2.1 to help insert over 3,800 different types of bibliographic styles of citations and notes into your document.

–Ready to share your document or designed work with someone else, even a PC user? iWork lets you save and share your work as a Word file without losing all the great design look of your project. You can also share your work via email, save it as a PDF document, or upload it to a document-sharing service where anyone can log in, review, make comments or approve of the work.

–Speaking of PC, iWork design software is extremely PC friendly letting anyone share documents, spreadsheets and presentations with others using a Mac or PC. With the Keynote tool you can share all kinds of files as Quicktime video, PDF, HTML or even an image file. You can also upload a presentation directly to your YouTube account.

–Small business professionals will absolutely fall in love with Numbers 09, which lets you create formulas for spreadsheets, organize data and design charts with all kinds of pre-loaded templates. Numbers 09 takes the pain out of making spreadsheets and charts work in an easy-to-understand manner.

Whether your needs are for business, marketing or blogging, iWork has something to impress and make your life easier, and it’s a no-brainer to help with productivity. Check out iWork design software here and see how it can help your business, blogging or social media needs.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Local Marketing Strategies For Small Business

July 20, 2009 By 5 Comments

employeesYou can never have enough time to talk about how to leverage the Internet to engage a local audience by utilizing local marketing strategies. UnderstandingMarketing.com can’t underscore enough the importance of having a strong local search marketing and local online marketing strategy. Here are several tips to help any small business with their local area marketing:

Your Website Should Look Clean, Fresh and Inviting

Choose a color scheme that is simple, easy on the eyes and visually compelling. Try not to over do it with lots of colors and patterns that contrast to much. And don’t try to use every single color in your 64 Crayon Box (you know who you are).

Photos are also important in a Web site trying to attract local search marketing. Have images that depict who you are, what you do and what you offer your customers. Have fresh, clean photos of products on any product pages. Find images that visually tell your story and what kind of services you offer. Use iStockPhoto for stock photography (it isn’t free but it can fit every business budget). It also has a wonderfully large inventory of images for virtually every keyword. Remember, simply the way you design your Web site can be a huge factor when doing local area marketing.

Don’t forget pictures of you! People like knowing who they’re doing business with. Develop a well-written “About Us” page that tells visitors some history of you, your company, and any other key players inside the company.

Fresh Content Ties It Together

Once you’ve got the right design for your Web site or blog, now focus on building content that’s fresh, compelling, interactive and engaging. This can definitely be ultra key in your local marketing strategy. Think about your frequency and focus with content. Publish content a few times a week if possible so that you always have some fresh content on your site. Also, make sure that you truly think about who is visiting your site.

Create content that educates and inspires them to learn more about you. If you have a blog, create content that fosters a sense of community on the Web (almost mirroring the local community in which you live). Your blog posts should have a call to action but also invite and encourage people to leave comments so as to keep the conversation going. Think about what you do for your visitors. For a great local marketing strategy always write content that helps visitors learn more about you and your products and services.

Don’t forget to also link to other online resources and blogs (and online resources in your local community). This gives you credibility, continues that theme of community and is also great for search engines. Remember, especially in local online marketing the “Web” is like a spider web where blog posts and online content is all weaved together for the search engines.

Speaking of Search Engines

Continuing from the previous thought, fresh content and linking will always help drive search engine optimization and rankings. Use tools like Google Adwords to identify the most appropriate keywords to embed in all your content and other local marketing strategies. Whether it’s a blog post, a Web page or even a bio in your “About Us” section, always use keywords that help the search engines find you.

Make sure there are no broken links in any of your posts or pages as these interrupt the search engines and make it harder to find you. Place special emphasis on the meta tags and title tags used in all posts and pages. For local area marketing, you may want to consider including the name of your town and nearest metropolitan area in your keyword and title tags so that the local search results can identify you.

In addition to listing your site in the local search sites, like Google Maps and Yahoo!, also try to get inbound links (others linking their site to yours) from other locals. A good way to do this is to get local customers to write testimonials of you and then link to your site (or trade links with local community organizations and the Chamber of Commerce). And don’t forget to register your site on other important local search sites like Citysearch, Yelp and Judy’s Book.

Here are some other great resources on local marketing strategies:

SEO Tips For Any Small Business

Search Engine Optimization Bible

Yahoo! search marketing

Web domain registration

Filed Under: Blogs/Web Sites, SEM - Search Engine Marketing, SEO - Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: , , , , ,
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