This Video by Forbes has valuable tips on developing your branding message in a succinct way. If you don’t have a tweetable message for you business and your business is struggling, this could be why. I’d encourage you to take some time to work on this. It will help you with your focus, your business plan, your marketing and more. I’m in the process of revamping my and soon you will see a new website to match mine.

Helping the local economy one business at a time.

 Elevator Speech

When scanned with a smart phone the code can lead the scanner to a number of places. A store owner can put one in their window and offer an instant discount. A vendor at a fair or craft show could connect it to their website or facebook fan page. You could also direct visitors to sign up for you email list. (If you don’t have an email list read these to see what you’re missing.) There are many more options that are beyond my free offer, but if you’re interested, here are 10 Creative Ways to Use QR Codes for Marketing.

What I’m offering is a FREE qr code directed to a url of your choice. To get this FREE offer you need to sign-up for my email list. You can use the form in the right or left side bar depending on what page you’re reading this, or you can scan the code in this post. After you confirm your subscription you’ll receive an email with instructions to get your code. If you’re already a subscriber, email me, but hurry this offer is only good thru July 31, 2012.

Happy Scanning.

So, if you have a Linkedin account, make sure your profile is filled out 100%, do the other things in the video and 11 tips article that apply. If your business would greatly benefit from LinkedIn, you may want to take it to the next level with LinkedInfluence. If you have any questions post them here and I’ll do my best to get them answered.

If you don’t have Facebook’s new Timeline yet, you soon will. Hopefully the video above will help you with that transition. In this post 7 Way to Use New Facebook Page Timeline for Branding and Conversion by Douglas Idugboe you’ll find more tips to implement on you new Facebook timeline

Whether you build your own or hire someone to design your small business website you need to consider these seven needs. Unless you need an extensive shopping cart or have several items that need to be in an online shopping catalog, two things you don’t need is to spend several thousands of dollars or hire a fancy web designer. There are many affordable, low cost, quality, options, but that’s a topic for another post.

The first and most important thing a website needs is a way to capture your visitor’s information. I use Aweber. This is important so that you can build a relationship with your visitors then when they need your service or product or talk with someone who needs them you will still be fresh in there mind. If you don’t do this, you website is equivalent to a business card that is either tossed or ends up in the bottom of a drawer or pile and is forgotten.

When you design your small business website, you also need to provide your future customers with something of value to them. That will vary depending on your business. This can be done via blog posts, reports, ebooks etc.

Third you want to engage your visitors. One way this can be done is combining one and two by offering them something that they’d be willing to give you contact information to get. The action of them putting down their info is a time investment and an interaction with you. You can also have contests requiring a post, ask questions to encourage interaction, invite them ask questions, set up a forum, etc.?

There is debate about how much SEO help, but I feel every little bit helps. SEO stands for “search engine optimization” In simple terms think about what search terms you would use if you were looking for what your business has to offer. You want to use these terms on your site so that the search engines will find them. It’s a little more complicated than that but you can find out more about it when sign-up for my newsletter. If you have someone else build your site make sure they understand SEO and will incorporate it into you site.

With more and more people using their smart phones to search The Net, while on the go, having a site with mobile capabilities is something you may want to consider. Depending on your business and your clientele this may or may not be a high priority, but it’s something you should be aware of and consider.

Generally speaking your site needs to be updated regularly as search engines don’t like stagnant sites. So, how do you keep your site current? One of the easiest ways is with a blog, provided you post regularly. This can also help with tips 2-3 above.

Lastly you want a way to measure what’s happening on your site so you know which things are worth the effort. Many people including myself use Google Analytics. This will show you how many visitors you have, how long they stay on a page, what search terms get you more traffic and a whole lot more.

So there you have it, seven things your small business website needs. Whether you build it yourself or have someone design it for you, these are things you should ask about our incorporate. Capturing visitors information, a way to provide quality content, engage your future costumers, SEO, mobile friendly, updated regularly and analytics to measure activity. I provide this information, so that if you have no money you can DIY it, but in reality you should focus on your business and pay someone else to do the majority or all

Some people will start building an email list in their email account, such as Outlook. This is OK if you have only 15 or 20 people to email but when you start getting more and more prospects this can be a big problem.

For one, if you try to email hundreds of people from your own email account you’ll most likely get flagged as a spammer. And secondly, by US Can-Spam laws you must have a way for people to unsubscribe from your emails at the bottom of every email.

There are plenty of email service providers out there in the cyberspace, such as iContact & Getresponse, but my choice is Aweber. In addition to having a very successful and respected marketer recommend it to me here are more reasons why I choose Aweber:

1. High Deliverability – One of the most important factors you need to consider is whether or not your emails are getting to their targeted inboxes. They work to establish relationships with internet service providers so emails from Aweber will be delivered, not diverted to the Junk Folder. Aweber has one of the highest deliverability rates in the industry.
2. Pricing – Aweber is competitive in terms of pricing. You may be able to find less expensive options, but that lower price comes at a sacrifice in terms of deliverability, options, and support. You can start with a $1 trial and then continue at just $19 per month for up to 500 subscribers. With this plan you can send an unlimited number of emails per month.
3. Emails – In Aweber you have a number of features and options when it comes to sending emails. Most email software programs allow you to send both autoresponders and broadcasts but not many have a blog broadcast feature. Blog broadcasts are a way to send your latest blog updates directly – and automatically – to your subscribers. Aweber is also up to date in terms of social media functions, allowing you to automatically and instantly post your emails to Twitter and/or Facebook.
4. Templates – If you’re not a programmer (and most of us are not!) then it’s not easy to create great-looking opt-in forms or newsletters. Aweber has a very large selection of both that you can use as-is or easily customize to fit your business.
5. Customer Support –Aweber‘s customer support is top notch, offering phone support, live online chat, email, webinars, a free e-course, tutorials, and more. When you start to use the program there is even a set-up walk-through. If you’ve got problems or questions, there are a number of different ways to get help.
6. Subscriber Statistics – Understanding how many new subscribers you have, where they come from, what they click on and when they unsubscribe is important to your business. Aweber does an excellent job of subscriber management. One of the best features here is that you can send out emails to your lists separately or all at once. Even if your subscribers are on multiple lists they will only ever get one email – a great feature to save your subscribers the frustration of deleting multiple emails from multiple lists. You can also view detailed reports or even have them mailed to you.

Choosing an email service provider is an important decision. This is something you don’t want to change as you’ll likely lose subscribers. It can literally be the backbone of your online business so you’ll want to choose wisely. The best thing to do is write down all the features YOU need for your business and then search for a program that fits those needs. In most cases it will probably be Aweber, but no matter what you choose make sure you do it and start building your email list as soon as possible. Then you’ll be able to say what just about every profitable email list owner says at some point… “I wish I’d started building my list sooner!”

I ran across this today, and it’s just around the corner. This video mentions several things that the small business owner needs to be doing at this time in history.  It talks about communicating with customers via weekly emails, facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and more.

I hope you’ll take the minute and a half to watch this video. You can learn more about this event from their website and get promotional aids for their facebook page.
Here’s to small businesses

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