Category Archives: Small Business Marketing

5 New Year’s Resolutions For The Small Business

Business Management, Business Tech, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing,

Another year has come to a close and it is at this time that we usually take a moment to make a few goals for the coming twelve months. And whilst most of us will do this privately in order to set a few personal targets for 2014, the business owners amongst us may wish to make a few for their companies too.

The business world never stands still and that is why it is important to always try to push things forward by setting relevant goals for the year ahead. Here are a few that any small business owner may look to make.

Finally Get To Grips With Social Media 

Social media is no longer a new phenomenon, yet so many people who are in the position to use it to their advantage are still to unlock its full potential. It may be because they don’t think of themselves as technically minded people or it may be that they don’t see what all the fuss is about, but either way it’s time to take the plunge.

Social media, when used right, can help in all different areas of business and is nowhere near as daunting to use as you may think. There are plenty of resources online to help you out and you really won’t know what you are missing until you give it a try.

Start Networking 

Networking in your local area is a great way to build relationships with other business owners and also spread the word about your company. The power that is has to bring relevant and important sales leads right to your front door is fantastic and it can be very fulfilling, too. By giving up a couple of hours every week you can put yourself in a relevant environment which could really help push your business forward. Networking is definitely something that should be tried before you discount it.

Getting Your Payroll In Order 

There’s no hiding the fact that payroll is one of the least enjoyable areas of any business and one of the more complex things that you have to do from time to time. However, if you have been struggling with getting things done on time and keeping up with new legislation, then perhaps you should make 2014 the year you decide to outsource this area to a professional payroll provide, such as this. Not only will this take a huge weight off your mind, your employees will also benefit from always getting paid in full and on time.

Becoming A Better Boss 

Business resolutions are not just about making the company more successful. They can also be about focussing on how good a boss you are and attempting to get more out of your staff. It’s no secret that people will be willing to work harder for someone that really values them and so this could be the perfect place to start. Work on your management style and try to find the correct balance between professionalism and personality. This could involve becoming a better delegator, giving your employees more one to one interaction or just simply praising them more.

Take Some Time For You 

The chances are that 2013 was a rather busy year and so why not make it a goal to spend more time away from the office in 2014. We all need time to ourselves sometimes and when you are the owner of a business this can seldom present itself. Remember that just because you spend more time on something, it doesn’t mean it will be better and sometimes there’s a need to step back in order to see the bigger picture.

By Chris Mayhew

Chris MayhewChris Mayhew has always been interested in the comings and goings of the business world and has been looking at resolutions business owners could make this year. He would recommend Trace Payroll to anyone looking to get to grips with their payroll in 2014.

The Complete Beginner’s Guide To Social Media Marketing

Organic SEO, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, ,

twitter-mobileHave you avoided a move towards social media marketing? For the uninitiated, social media can seem like a waste of time. But marketing is about more than frittering away time on Facebook. It can be a genuine source of profitable income and could give your SME the traction it needs to grow.

So how do you get started? How can you avoid wasting time on social media? And what tools are there to give you a helping hand?

Planning Your Strategy

Social media marketing is a time-consuming process, so be aware of this from the second you start to plan your strategy. That means:

  • Don’t waste time on networks that aren’t relevant to your industry.
  • Don’t sign up for too many networks and attempt to run all of them at once.
  • Don’t write off a network because it looks ‘boring’.

Remember: social media marketing is about using resources wisely. Bad your brand name on every site, by all means (you can use this tool to help). But don’t actively use every single network on the web. Put some in reserve and concentrate on the key networks first.

The networks you use will vary depending on your industry; LinkedIn is surprisingly good for generating referrals for B2B customers, while Facebook excels in generating interest for B2C. If you work in a different niche, such as recruitment, LinkedIn is the obvious choice, but there are other networks you can use too; you’ll find a list in this handy PDF.

Using Automation to Keep Focus

Once you’ve chosen your key networks, you need towork out how to best use your limited time in order to post updates and interact. Many brands choose to oursource this to a social media management company or agency. If you’re going it alone, automated tools can help.

There are two main types of automated social media tools. There are some that distribute one update to different networks by placing them in a queue and posting to a schedule; Buffer is a good example of this. Then, there are others that link social networks together with triggers so that an action on one results in an action on another. For example, you might want a tweet to trigger a Facebook post. Look into Zapier if this sounds useful.

Automation should be used sparingly in social media. The clue’s in the name; you still need to personally interact with fans and followers to get results. But automation gets you part way there by making link posting easier and faster.

Final Thoughts

We’re fast heading towards a world where social media marketing isn’t optional; it’s basically a prerequisite of building a great brand. If you don’t get involved now, it’ll be more difficult to build a presence on social media later when your competitors are more established.

Like SEO, social media is an ongoing activity; a marathon rather than a race. But put the effort in, focus your resources correctly and adjust your approach to fit your niche, and soon you’ll reap the rewards.

By Sam Wright

Sam Wright is an SEO expert and writer. If you’re looking to advance your marketing career, Sam recommends taking a look at the Brand Republic job boards.

SEO Predictions For 2014

Google Plus, Hummingbird algorithm, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing

SEO saw huge changes with the Penguin and Hummingbird updates of 2013 and we can expect to see loads more of the same in 2014. However, it’s a pretty big subject – so what do we think will be the main areas of change in the coming year?

Diverse SERP’s

We’ve seen all sorts of changes to the SERPs in 2014 – some which were trialed and some of which were permanent. Organic listings got pushed down the page in a number of areas and we saw the Knowledge Graph and shopping result info take up its space. Schema Mark-up is going to be increasingly important in the search engine results page (SERPs).

Schema

Schema and Data Mark-up are going to be incredibly large in 2014 and Google’s been pointing this out for a while now. In fact, last year they even introduced a new Structured Data Mark-up Tool to help us out. So, expect to see a significant amount of more Schema mark-up for sites in 2014 and Google really pushing content that’s been ordered and organised in this way.

Authorship

Another one of the big pushes in the world of SEO will be in the Authorship area. Expect to see Big G really begin to implement this in 2014. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised to see digital agencies actually even take it into account when giving people jobs. So, get building those Google Circles and Twitter followings – they’re most certain to help in 2014.

Hummingbird

Hummingbird arrived at the end of the autumn and it’s going to have a large part to play in 2014. Semantic influenced content is set to be a big factor in 2014 and it’s going to come down to the production of long form articles that answers the long tail questions and queries users have. It’s going to be interesting to see how it’s going to affect the world of the SERPs and SEO.

Technical SEO

Expect to see an increased focus on the technical SEO area and more onuses on mobile optimisation and site speed. Mobile is such a large part of the search world now that sites that haven’t passed any attention to it before now will suffer in 2014. Crawl errors, broken links and technical issues are also going to cause big problems too in 2014 for sites.

Guest Blogging

Expect to see some changes to the world of guest blogging. Until now Google has allowed for some leeway here, however as Matt Cutts has stated already Google is seeing a lot of spun content and duplicate content, among other abuses in the area. At http://fusewave.co.uk/ we obviously don’t expect guest blogging to disappear, but do expect it to evolve and the cream of the crop to rise to the top and the poorer stuff to get a bit of a battering after an algorithm update in the first half of the year.

Fake Reviews

Expect fake reviews to begin to disappear and expect Google to really begin to heavily punish companies it expects are creating false reviews of their products.

Social Signals

Expect these to become increasingly important and though there is no proof they do so at the moment, many people expect to see it as an occurring development in the coming year and that we’ll see Google take them into account as a ranking factor in 2014.

These are just some of the SEO changes that we can expect to see in 2014 and though we may not be right about all of them, expect some to come to pass.

By Cormac Reynolds a social media writer with a passionate interest in the subject. When he’s not writing about it, he is learning about social media.

Quick SEO Guide For New Websites

SEO, SEO training, Small Business Marketing,

Quick SEO guideA volume of online content is available for owners of new websites. Most advice is targeted at business owners deciding how much to spend on their new online presence. Paying a professional web design firm enables these owners to deploy a fancy website without spending in-house resources.

However, once a new site is live, businesses must move on to the next phase of online competition. Improving the search engine rankings of a new website is just as important as creating the site itself. Thankfully, a basic search engine optimization (SEO) effort can be described in a single article.

The following is a quick SEO guide for new websites:

Check On-Site Issues

Look for broken links. Even brand-new websites can suffer from broken internal links. As pages are moved or additional content is added, site administrators can miss an occasional broken link.These errors, though small, can magnify over time and reduce site credibility and performance.

Make the site accessible to search engines. Search engines are computers that “read” your site in a different way than humans. Technical files like the robot.txt are critical to search engines even as they are invisible to end users.

Test site speed. Faster websites rank better in Google and Bing. Faster websites are more popular with users as well. Check for speed-related problems such as caching, image size, or excessive redirects to ensure you have a fast website. The webmaster of a sports site saw a 12% increase in search rankings across 115 keywords just by reducing image sizes on the photo-heavy website.

Delete bloated code. Websites consist of content directed at humans and code directed at computers. While this back-end code is required for all sites, try to achieve a 1:1 ratio of content readable to humans and code intended just for computers.

Create More Content

New content is the lifeblood of the internet. Search engines reward sites with useful, timely, and relevant content that is updated regularly. Unfortunately new sites have very little content and are trying to compete with established sites with years of content.

According to Hawaii SEO company, Argon Marketing, new website owners should incorporate a simple rule when it comes to developing content:

Match the quality of content on your competition’s site, then beat them on volume.

Different industries have different guidelines. The quality of content on the website for a physician’s group will be quite different than the content used for a take-out restaurant. But within a specific industry, it is easy to identify the level of quality required by simply looking at the websites that rank for relevant key words.

New site owners should determine the quality of content necessary to rank in their industry, then spend resources generating more content than their competition. When performed properly, this method of content generation ensures long-term success for a business and its website.

Develop a Strategy For Links

Google has a public set of guidelines for new webmasters. Bing’s guidelines are quite similar. In both cases, search engines try to reward sites that do certain things and punish sites that do other things. The distinction between these types of sites, though murky, is called “white-hat” and “black-hat” in the online community.

Moralistic and legal arguments aside, each new website owner should develop an overall strategy for the method by which they intend to get new links. At one extreme, an owner can do absolutely nothing and hope to generate free, organic links over time. At the other, an owner can actively advertise to pay prominent websites cash in exchange for links. The former will result in terrible rankings for years. The latter will result in search engine penalties within weeks.

All site owners need to determine where they want to fall between the two extremes. Before considering specific tactics or working on keywords, the website owner should settle on a long-term plan for the method of acquiring links. Their level of risk-tolerance, industry, and purpose for the site should affect the link strategy. Then, in turn, the link strategy will determine which particular link tactics the site should utilize.

These three, basic steps, are the first actions a new website owner should take when trying to begin an SEO strategy. Whether working on SEO in-house or paying for a professional, online marketing company, the owners of new websites need to invest resources to compete with their established competition.

This article has been written by Nolan Kido. Nolan works in the technology industry in Honolulu, Hawaii.