Many small business owners immediately think emails, online ads and social media when conceptualizing marketing campaigns. Failure to consider direct-mail marketing is undoubtedly doing a disservice to your business.

According to Business2Community, direct mail boasts a 65 percent conversion rate. That is second only to email marketing, and blows online advertising and social media out of the water. Yet only 20 percent of businesses using direct mail are tracking the results. This indicates that direct mail is not being taken seriously as a marketing mechanism. Here are some compelling arguments, in addition to the strong conversion rates, in favor of direct mail as a wise way to spend your advertising dollars.

Less Likely to Get Lost

When you send out a mass email, there’s a good chance it will be filtered out of the intended recipient’s inbox. According to CRW Graphics, junk mail filters will only get more advanced and more sensitive as time passes. However, with direct mail you are almost guaranteed delivery to the intended recipient.

It Can’t Get a Virus

When you send something via snail mail, it will be delivered with less risk of a harmful interception, and can’t get a virus which is a risk for email. Email messages can easily pick up viruses along their journey. This can damage your online reputation, and be detrimental to your business.

It Provides Privacy

Direct mail is more secure than email. With the exception of the occasional mailbox thief, most mail will be delivered to the intended recipient without issues.

USPS Deals

Since return on investment is always the goal, it pays to become familiar with programs the postal service offers. The USPS has special discounts for companies mailing in bulk. The program is quite simple and has very few requirements. You have to meet a minimum number of mailings based on the type of mail you are sending out (for first-class mail you need 500 pieces), you must get a permit and agree to do some of the work, like sorting the mail by zip code. You’ll want to be certain the addresses you have are accurate to prevent waste. Any address lists you buy should be from a company that uses CASS certified software.

It Makes a Bigger Impact

Direct mail will make a footprint in the reader’s brain much more than any online counterpart. Physically holding something in your hands resonates far more than reading an email. Catalogs are also an effective tool for marketing. They are cost-effective and another lost art in the world of advertising.

Take the time to research all the caveats that come with direct-mail marketing so you can maximize your returns. Get creative, make pieces that stand out, and make sure to track your metrics. Your efforts are sure to reap unfathomable rewards.

I was lucky enough to get a last minute ticket to Google I/O this year. Living in Silicon Valley, and having many friends there, I get to visit the Google campus quite a bit.

But I still really enjoyed this event because it represented a great overall picture of what the smart folks at Google are working on and where they are going over the next several years.

Here are a few things that stood out for me; and I hope they are interesting or helpful for you.

The very first thing I noticed when going to the event, was how many people were wearing “Google Glasses”. It was odd to see so many people in these glasses at the same event. I mean hundreds (or more) people were wearing them.

And they are a bit “mysterious” too. What can people do with those glasses? Take my picture, record video, what else?

Google Glass

A friend of mine, Matt McGee, has been wearing them for the past two weeks. He’s a talented writer/blogger and his write-ups have been really entertaining. You can read them here. Google Glass Diary.

Also, Mike Blumenthal put together a great post of the LocalU crowd’s impressions. This is another great read: Google Glass: Metaphor for the Future of Local?

I got to try them out briefly. I was expecting a sort of “heads up display” where the information was displayed over the environment around me. Like this:

What I imagined Google Glass would be like…

But it was really more of a square box in the upper right corner of my vision. They felt more like a “proof of concept” or alpha to me.

What Google Glass was actually like… not what I imagined

But they do light up your imagination. Within minutes of playing with them I was thinking of specialized scenarios where something like this would be pretty cool.

For example, what if Oakley produced ski goggles with something like this built in. And not only could you record your epic ski or snowboard run without that GoPro strapped to the top of your helmet, but you could also call up a map of the mountain you were skiing on and the GPS would tell you exactly where you were. Or where your friends are. Then you could text or call your friends who are on another slope, and get them to meet up for lunch.

I’m sure there are hundreds of other ideas like this popping into developers heads at the conference…

The Chromebook Pixel

The next thing that surprised me is that Google gave away a Chromebook Pixel to every attendee (and there were 6,000 of them!)

At first I thought this was just a low-end netbook or something.

Then I opened it up and WOW – this machine is very different than what I thought. The screen is absolutely gorgeous – even better than the Retina display on my Macbook Pro.

The Chromebook Pixel display at Google I/O

And it is touch-enabled! So you can scroll around on the trackpad like usual, or actually touch the screen and interact with it that way. Kind of like a Windows Surface, except the screen is not detachable. It was kinda cool and I found myself touching the screen more than I thought I would. Not sure how much I would use this but it is definitely intriguing.

The machine a gorgeous aluminum unibody construction, like the Macbooks; the industrial design is fantastic.

The other thing I had to get my mind around – this machine is not running Windows or OS X. It is running Google’s Chrome OS. This means that everything you do is pretty much inside Google Chrome.

It sounds kind of strange – a computer where you can only use the browser…? But the Chrome Apps were surprisingly good, and I was impressed by how much I could actually do on the machine.

It only came with 32GB of storage (flash, not a physical hard drive) which doesn’t seem like much. But, when you sign in Google upgrades your Google Drive account to 1 Terabyte. Yes, you read that right – one Terabyte. That’s a whole lot of storage in the cloud.

The only problem with my new Chromebook; my daughter took it as soon as I got home and I haven’t seen much of it since

Google Maps Refresh

I also got to play around with the new Google Maps. I love what they’ve done with the UI here. Basically, they got it out of the way. This gives you much more screen real estate to work with.

And you can tell the maps are vector based now, which means that scaling and zooming and panning happens much faster. It just feels easier to move around in and looks better too.

Implications for local search:
As Matt McGee points out in his article, the new UI only applies to maps.google.com, so it doesn’t really change the Local Search experience, at least yet. But he’s got a really nice rundown with screenshots here: A Tour of the New Google Maps.

This will be rolling out to all Google users eventually, but in the meantime you can signup for an invite to the new Google Maps here.

Google+ Updates and Changes

Google+ is gaining momentum. During the keynote, Google unveiled many new UI improvements and unified all of their messaging apps under Google Hangouts.

Sure, lots of people compare Google+ to Facebook and say it has a long way to go. Why should I invest my time in yet another social network, when everyone I know is already on Facebook?

Well, here’s one compelling reason for you: better search rankings. If you are friends with someone on Google+, your results are prioritized for them. This goes for business pages too. It’s a really big deal, and why I committed to Google+ immediately when it came out.

==> Connect with me on Google+ here

The new changes only make the case for Google+ more compelling.

New new UI is fantastic, and I find myself using it more and more, both on my desktop and mobile devices.

Here is an in-depth look at the new Google+ features.

Hangouts, which is a great feature of Google+, has been so successful that Google broke it out into its own app called Google Hangouts. They’ve also unified Google Talk and Voice so that it all becomes one product now. And you can download Google Hangouts for your PC or Mac, iPhone, Android, etc.

I’m looking for something to replace tired old Skype, and I’ve been experimenting with Hangouts for a while, but so far it hasn’t been up to the task. Maybe the new changes will help. Some of our Expand2Web members like it too, so I’ll be spending some more time with this now.

Photos – Google+ has been very popular with photographers. Many of the early adopters were photographers, and Google did a great job with the way Google+ handles photo uploads and sharing. They continue to improve that experience in the latest updates, allow you to upload your full resolution photos, and automatically enhancing your photos, even making animations out of them.

Take Aways

I came away from the conference with the definite impression that Google is firing on all cylinders.

If you didn’t get to go to the conference, what do you wish you could have seen there?
Do you have any questions or comments about the conference? Please let me know in the comments!

-Don

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) doesn’t have to be the big scary block that many feel you need to hire a professional agency to manage. When you start up a new company you don’t even have to hire an expensive web designer to create your website and do your SEO for you. There are many templates and businesses that offer tools for website creation, many of these are easy to use allowing you to make your own website quickly and effectively manage its content.

The scary truth is that many small web designers have SEO skills that are set in the past and many companies don’t realize that they can do most of the current important local SEO work themselves.

When your business is small and operating in a niche making or selling their service in a small local radius, there is no reason you can’t dominate these markets. There are many factors that contribute to modern Google rankings and the great thing for small businesses is that most of these aren’t technical.

When thinking about local SEO, which is how people search for businesses local to them, Google takes factors into account, such as physical location, reviews and business listings.

To give an example of local search if you go onto Google and search for the word Taxi:

(Screenshot of Google search for Taxi)

The results that it brings up will be based on your physical location and for me this is giving a list of taxi numbers in Leeds, England as this is where I work from. This shows that even small companies can advertise themselves to their customers locally.

To influence local search, companies first have to show search engines where your business is based. In terms of onsite SEO this means having clear mentions of your business’s location; for example if you are a cleaning firm your homepage’s title might be: “(Company name) – Quality affordable cleaners in (town/city name).”

However the majority of local search ranking is generated offsite. One of the easiest ways for small businesses to help their company rank is through social media. The three main social media channels for local search are: Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Facebook
You should create a business listings page on Facebook and try and get your regular customers to follow you. Many companies do this my offering exclusive discounts or deals to people who like / follow them.

Once you are on Facebook and your customers who live locally are following you, this is a good sign for search engines that your business is genuine and popular.

Facebook is also great as you can advertise company news and is one of the easiest methods to speak to your customers directly. However you need to make sure you don’t solely post ads as this will look very ‘spammy’ and will stop customers from engaging with you.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a more professional take on social media and is often used for networking between various companies, staff and industry experts. You should make sure to claim your business page and post regular company news on here.

An active LinkedIn profile can be well shared, especially if you are contributing regularly to industry specific discussions. Although LinkedIn isn’t usually as influential as Google+ or Facebook for local search, it is still a key place to be listed to help search engines confirm your location and better rank you.

Google+
Although a lot of people don’t use Google+ as a standard social network, it is arguably the most important for business listings.

Google+ has integrated the old Google Maps local business pages into its business listings section. These are what appears on the map to the right when searching for results and so it’s very important to claim your business page and put as much information about your business as you can on here.

Company reviews are also very important and is a key factor in business rankings online. Having positive reviews not only makes your company trustworthy to potential customers but helps you rank high in search engines as you’re seen as a trust worthy business that customers interact with.

However it is very important not to try and fake reviews. Google tracks where these reviews come from and has penalized many businesses in the past who have tried to lie and make up lots of fake positive reviews.

Final thought

Local search is a powerful tool that can quickly help small businesses grow and flourish in the online environment. SEO has, and continues to, move away from traditional methods of keyword spam and other so called ‘black hat’ methods which has opened up a path for smaller companies who supply high quality relevant content and genuine testimonials to succeed online via local SEO.

No, this isn’t a list of irrelevant facts. It’s a list of stuff that simply wastes your time.

They say just 20% of knowledge drives 80% of results. But for Facebook, it’s more like 5% and 95%.

It’s hard trying to keep up all the time. Believe me, I know. So, take it from me, a guy who’s spent 100 hours a week for the past 6 years on Facebook – researching, testing, learning.

I’ll save you some time.

EdgeRank

It’s just a bunch of voodoo. Facebook has literally said there’s no such thing as EdgeRank, and we have every reason to trust them. You don’t need to understand any abstruse formulas or buy software to calculate your rank.

Breathe in and relax; it’s one less thing to worry about.

What is important, however, is that you create engaging content and create it often. Facebook’s product management team describes the ideal strategy as “many lightweight touches over time.”

Building Your Own Facebook Apps

Do you work for Zynga or another company that specializes in building Facebook games? If you do, you can ignore what I’m about to say. If you don’t, listen up.

Ignore FQL, the open graph, and the various APIs. For you, FQL is the same thing as FML. All levity aside, still ignore it.

There are so many off-the-shelf, dollar-a-day apps out there. You really don’t need to build your own unless you’re a very big company.

The Latest Buzz

But what about Facebook home, the updated News Feed, graph search, PTAT, gizmo-this and feature-that?

Just focus on traffic and conversion. Does it drive more people to my website or store? Will it cause more people to buy? If not, fugghettaboutit.

Self-Proclaimed Gurus, Experts, Masters, or Grand Poo-Bahs

Check out their Facebook page. Do they have at least 3,000 fans and 300 active users? Or, is it a ghost town?

You wouldn’t take weight loss advice from a fat person, so don’t take social media advice from someone whose only friend is Tom.

Just talk to people with proven results. Besides, you can get their advice free with this trick.

Content From Anyone Who Cold Calls You

Honestly, I think it’s pretty funny how many unemployed consultants want us to hire them to do our marketing. I get half a dozen unsolicited pitches a day from people desperate to work, promising they can get us more work.

See the irony?

In the world of Facebook, results are easy to measure. But if you do need to hire someone, use this to weed out the imposters.

Okay, So What Do I Need to Know?

The Facebook fundamentals won’t change for a while, despite the daily “noise” we always hear. Don’t get sucked in. Remember all the Google nonsense over the past 14 years? It’ll repeat itself on Facebook.

Your Facebook audience, your email audience, your website audience – they’re merging. And it’s happening because:

• You can upload your email list to Facebook and message them there, as well as use Facebook to collect emails.
• Google Analytics tracks where your visitors come from and what content works best, no matter where you post it. 2 birds with 1 stone.
• You have to drive traffic with Facebook ads (60 minute set-up steps here), but retarget them on Google.
• People are connecting to your digital properties with their Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn accounts – you see the “sign in with Facebook” buttons all over the web, right?

Now you’re thinking about Facebook differently. You’re seeing it as a word-of-mouth platform that links your customers together across all your properties.

It’s like the electric company. And you have to pay your utility bill.

When you create good content around a solid product or service, your customers just do your marketing for you.

And if you do a horrible job creating content, or if your product or service is lame, no amount of Facebook magic will fix it.

So, really, nothing’s changed, except that we have another way to connect with the same customer base we’ve had all along.

Trust your instincts. Think about the kind of marketing that works best in the real world, and resist being distracted by every shiny object you see along the way.

Then you can focus on what you do best – selling real estate, making WordPress sites, baking croissants, or whatever.

It’s better than wrestling with the latest arcane terminology consultants like me put out!

I hope this gives you a perspective on Facebook that will last you for years, so you can safely ignore most of the hype.

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments below if you think of something else we can ignore on Facebook.

Do you have an online business? Are you looking to build a successful one? You have a lot to learn from WeightWatcers.com, a company that has perfectly marketed itself in the gigantic global weight management industry.

When it comes to clever marketing that steps in at the right time and takes advantage of a huge demand that will only increase in the foreseeable future, Weight Watchers is a model company that every motivated entrepreneur should look at.

Of all the companies that compete for their share of the $60 billion obesity industry, it is the company that gives the customers what they want that will always come out on top. Weight Watchers is that sort of company.

It listened to and observed its customers and has continually catered to the requests and demands of its clients. Because of this, Weight Watchers is an online tour de force, with 1.6 million active online subscribers in 2011, up from just over 1 million in 2010.

Clearly, weight Watchers is doing something right to captivate so many new clients. But what? Why has Weight Watchers become such a Pied Piper of weight loss systems?

Marketing is a funny business with many different philosophies. Marketing experts always think they know what we, the consumers, are thinking and based on their assumptions they try to sell us products. It is rare that they truly get it right. But there are a few ‘secrets’ of the marketing world that Weight Watchers has adhered to and they are certainly paying off. Here are just a few.

Link Your Product to a Good Cause

Cause Marketing is an effective marketing strategy that results in a win-win situation for both a business and a non-profit organization, as the former generates money to support the good cause of the latter.

Weight Watchers launched “Lose for Good” in 2010, a good example of a cause marketing campaign. This program helps feed hungry children and families in need. The more pounds Weight Watchers’ participants lose, the more money and food the company donates.

In 2013, the donation goal is $1 million. “Let’s lose for somebody else’s gain” is the campaign’s motto in an era where world hunger is at an all time high. Through this program, Weight Watchers has already fed 6,000 children in South Sudan, and has donated in US local food drives 2 million pounds of food, collected by its members who responded to the company’s call: Help Weight Watchers fight hunger.

Is you product linked to a good cause? Cause marketing not only supports your favorite charity, it also increases your product’s reputation. Customers are very receptive to cause marketing because it allows them to donate without increasing their monthly spending—they buy products they would buy anyway.

Join for Free and Let the Product Sell Itself

There are different ways to execute this type of strategy. One way is to offer the customer a free trial and if they forget to cancel their subscription, they are automatically opted in to the product. Often it is difficult to remember to cancel these types of subscription, which can lead to irate customers and complaints against companies that attempt to gain market share in this way.

Instead, Weight Watchers uses what is called the ‘Free Trial Marketing’ method where it allows potential customers to experience a Weight Watchers meeting at any time and does not require the visitor to give any monetary information.

During the meeting, the potential customer meets people who are successful, is exposed to all of the company’s material and food products and are offered the opportunity to join. This type of marketing strategy, says marketing analyst Tony Rossel, can get a company conversion rates pushing 30%.

Take Advantage of your Competitors’ Weaknesses

Weight Watchers noticed that clients of Nutrisystem, the number two commercial weight loss program, did not enjoy the prepackaged, “TV dinner” type of foods or the very strict meal plans and schedules the competitor offers. I know that food packaged and dehydrated isn’t the best motivator for me when I am trying to lose weight.

Weight Watchers capitalized on that general feeling and started promoting its product as “real food in the real world”. They also pushed the fact that their program has flexibility, allowing the customer to choose their own path. Not only does this make potential clients think that they are eating much better on Weight Watchers, but it also gives them an important sense of empowerment which further endears them to the program.

Serve Your Product in a New and Improved Form

Are you constantly making your product better? The improvement of a product is key to business success. The cornerstone of Weight Watchers program is the Points system — a sophisticated method for tracking the caloric content of food.

Throughout the years, this program has improved, re-packaged, and been given different names. The Points system, introduced in 1997, was re-launched as Momentum program in 2008, PointsPlus in 2010, and Weight Watchers 360 in December 2012. All these are improved versions of a basic product which has been studied, researched, and re-formulated for more than 40 years.

Along with the improvement in the main product, every year the company offers new online and offline tools (food and exercise trackers, progress charts, recipes, workouts), supportive secondary products (scales, food, activity monitor devices), and appealing opportunities for savings.

If your business has been offering a particular product for some time, think how you can improve it to better serve your customers. Has the technology related to your product changed? Have your customers developed different preferences since the first time you launched your product? You need to adjust.

Sell the feelings, Not the Product

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to listen to a bunch of doctors and experts tell me about my cholesterol levels and diabetes risk over and over when I am in a weight loss program. What motivates me most of all is the promise that I will FEEL better, in mind and body.

Customers are not motivated by lectures or finger-shaking. They want the company to tell them that their product will give them success. Famous singer and Weight Watchers spokesperson Jessica Simpson stated after losing weight on Weight Watchers “….”I feel good.”… “I feel like I’m on top of the world!”…“I have been losing weight with Weight Watchers and I feel great.”

It’s all about the feelings, the wants, not necessarily the needs. Weight Watchers brings to its customers what they want, which is to enjoy food and eat what they like. It doesn’t focus on what they need, which is to get on a diet, eat that broccoli and lose weight.

Weight Watchers’ plan ultimately teaches people to eat healthy and keep the weight off, but the focus of the marketing message is “eat what you love and feel good” and “Weight Watchers works because it’s not a diet”.

What feeling is your business associated with? Make sure your marketing creates in your customers’ mind a neuro-association between your product and that feeling.

Make Your Solution Look Unprecedented

With its new Weight Watchers 360 program, Weight Watchers uses a brilliant marketing strategy by touting its system as a complicated calculation based on a food’s ability to be metabolized in various ways.

The ads will have you believe that this is a breakthrough scientific discovery made exclusively by Weight Watchers. It uses the old glycemic index of various foods along with how foods are broken down by the body, assigning points based on how food affects the body’s blood sugar and overall energy. It sounds very heady and science-based doesn’t it?

But it is no more complicated than other programs. The beauty of Weight Watchers is that it makes a point to tell customers and potential customers that they are special because of these ‘advances’ and that these ‘advances’ in food science will aid them in their weight loss goals more than any of the other programs that exist.

Brilliant. Doesn’t all of this give you confidence in the product? Weight Watchers tells you exactly what you want to hear. They have applied fundamental, effective and cutting-edge marketing strategies. They are willing to listen to what works for people and respond, and act on that for your benefit. There is a lot we can learn from that.

Matthew is an online entrepreneur who studies how various companies apply their marketing strategies to sell their weight loss programs in the diet industry. His blog is affiliated with and presents reviews of some of the most successful companies including Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, and Medifast. Like Don, Matthew is living his dream of working from home, spending quality time with his family, and often earning money without working.

In this session of the Expand2Web Podcast, I talk with website usability expert Aaron Weiche from Spyder Trap. Aaron is Vice President of Spyder Trap, and is also a faculty member at Local University.

I met Aaron while presenting at Local University in New York, and wanted to have him on the podcast to share some of his tips with you.

In the podcast, Aaron and I talk about the common mistakes that we see businesses making with their websites that severely limits their success online. Aaron then goes on to describe what he considers the four pillars of a great website.

In This Podcast You’ll Learn About:

The four pillars of a great website:

1. Usability: A few key usability considerations your website must take advantage of.
2. Content: Most business owners neglect this, yet it is the biggest opportunity in terms of customer engagement and search rankings.
3. Design: This is often overemphasized. But there are a few key things you can do to create the perfect container for the content on your website and allow people to find it.
4. Technology: Picking the right content management system makes it easy to update your website and create new content.

We go into depth on each of these four pillars in the podcast.

Resources Mentioned In This Podcast

Here are links to the resources mentioned in the podcast:

• Spyder Trap online marketing – Aaron’s company
• Aaron on Google+
• Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• Marketing by Sharing Video mentioned by Don.
• WordPress – a great, low-cost content management system for small business websites.

I really think you’ll enjoy this one. Thanks Aaron!

Listen to the Podcast about Great Websites

You can listen to the podcast by clicking the play button at the top of this post. Or you can download the MP3 audio file by clicking the download link if you’re like me and you listen to interviews on your iPod/iPhone in the car.

Help the Show!

I would love if you took a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below! It would be extremely helpful for the show!

Leave a review for Don’s podcast!

Thank you again for your support, and I wish you all the best!

Complete Written Transcript of the Podcast

“Right Click” here to download the PDF transcript.

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The relationship between social media marketing and small businesses has moved beyond infancy. You cannot measure customer engagement and experience by counting the amount of likes and tweets. Facebook and Twitter are valuable regarding interaction but not utilized to maximum capacity. By following these simple tips you can use social media to connect to your customers and build new relationships.

Engaging Content

Move beyond sending a Tweet or posting information on your Facebook business page to fully engaging with your customers. Create a dialogue. The information on your social media pages must be fresh and relevant. Create original, timely and engaging content and void repetitive content. Create information tailored to your customer base instead of a broad spectrum.

Keep the Conversations Going

Exposure is a key to growing your small business. Word of mouth may not generate business but with social media, you can create buzz around your business and brand. More than 80% of online marketing firms agree social media engagement is based upon social interaction between the customer and the business.

But don’t stop at your core customers. Instead,  tap into the entire online community, moving beyond your customer base and into the greater audience of potential relationships.  When you engage with these potential customers and your existing customers, you increase full engagement by 87 percent, according to a J.D. Power and Associate study.

What Worked?

Your business does not move forward unless you understand your prior faults. Look at your prior engagement year over year. What worked and what did not work?

Review your social media metric tools and engagement score. If you were not using a conversion tool, you need to start. Do not limit your activity to the major social media networks. To get the full picture, look at all of the social media platforms where you have a presence.

Setting Goals

After reviewing what worked in the past, set new goals. Every goal starts with the customer in mind. Look at your customer service levels. How did your business interact with the customer? How do you want to change in order to increase customer engagement?

Create a micro-niche tailored to a broader customer base. Continue to educate the customer regarding your brand and your business. Tie in the importance of the customers as it relates to the success of the business.

Engagement

Creating a social media marketing strategy is more than just creating a Facebook page or a Twitter page. You want return on your investment. You decide the engagement strategy needed which results in sales.

The engagement strategies generating the most return are marketing engagement and servicing engagement. Marketing engagement relies on brand management and awareness while connecting with customers. Servicing engagement places the focus on troubleshooting problems.

When customers present questions on social media, businesses must address concerns and offer a resolution. For example, customers receive answers to commonly asked questions on the company Facebook page verses traditional lines of communication.

There is power shift in social media. The power is no longer in the hands of the businesses, but the hands of the customer. Customers are no longer standing by waiting on the business to offer new products and services. Customers today want immediate results, brand transparency and validation that they are an integral part of the business process.

Our Expand2Web Expert group is a membership group which offers ongoing training and support for web consultants who work with small business owners. This series of member profiles showcases exactly what you can do when you put your knowledge and training into action.

CJ Hallock is an expert at using social media along with web and mobile technologies to help businesses, organizations and individuals build relationships with their customers. Not many people will buy something from an anonymous website and just as many people don’t want to listen to a hard sell. Relationship building is a must for any business.

Prior to starting his social media career, CJ proudly served for the U.S. Navy with travels to Africa, Germany, Croatia, Greece and many other locations. While on shore duty in Norfolk, VA CJ met Miguel Curl, who introduced him to the “Personal Development” and “Self-Help” mindset which changed his life forever.

In June of 2009 CJ partnered with Gary Anderson and created a blog dedicated to personal development to help people look at the positive things in life and “Stay Boosted”.

http://www.stayboosted.com

CJ started Visionet Media because he got tired of seeing small companies get over charged for work. Not to mention what they paid for is never what they received. So he started to help the small businesses in his local area learn how to handle a lot of the minor things themselves, such as managing social media, adding blog posts and other minor necessities.

“The best part about my business is when I see companies who are about to go out of business grow to being overwhelmed with business. All from the efforts of my company. That is the best feeling in the world!”

Visionet Media provides a wide range of services including: WebDesign, Social Media Setup, Mobile Marketing, Consulting and much more. But fair warning…CJ is a die-hard Nebraska Cornhuskers football fan so if you call for work during a game, Visionet Media is Closed <- His Rule! He currently resides in Jonesborough, TN.

Here is just a sampling of CJ’s portfolio:

http://visionetmedia.com/portfolio/

“When it comes to starting a business, the best piece of advice I have for anyone would be to stay humble, never quit and use all the free resources you can get your hands on! With free platforms like facebook, twitter, google plus and many more, you can get the
word out about your business fairly fast. If you use it right and don’t spam! ”

During his days off CJ loves family time with his 4 nieces and 3 nephews as well as blogging at http://www.cjhallock.com

To connect with CJ, you’ll find him on Twitter, Facebook, or at Visionet Media

http://www.facebook.com/cjhallock

http://www.twitter.com/cjhallock

Website Name : Visionetmedia.com (Company is Visionet Media)

Take a look around your own community. How many small businesses are in your town or city? Do they all have websites? Your possibilities for growing your web consultant business are vast but if you feel you need some more training, come check out our membership group. You’ll receive regular training sessions and support from our experts and current members.

Websites with Blogs get 55% more traffic than other websites.

Why? Because websites with blogs get updated more frequently with unique content.

In this session of the Expand2Web Podcast, I talk with copywriter and digital marketer Jennifer Nice, President of Write-Nice. Jennifer shares her story on how she started out as a writer in 3rd grade. She later went on to become a language arts teacher. Then two years ago she sailed around the world with her family, left her teaching job, and started her own business on the web (using the SmallBiz Theme I’m proud to say!).

Jennifer shares some awesome tips for any business owner or internet marketer in this interview.

In This Podcast You’ll Learn About:

Practical tips about content for your website like:

1. Common mistakes businesses make with their websites that costs them rankings and traffic
2. How people read on the web, and how you can use this to make your content more effective
3. How writing for the web is different than other types of writing
4. Why Content Marketing is the best way to market your business now (and what is Content Marketing anyway? Jennifer has a great definition.)
5. What kind of content should a business put on their website? We share some specific examples in the interview
6. The main place website projects break down, and how to get past it!
7. How to hire a copywriter (including a helpful template you can use to save money)
8. Why WordPress is a great way to go for your business website

Resources Mentioned In This Podcast

• Jennifer’s website: http://www.write-nice.com
• Jennifer’s travel blog: http://expass.wordpress.com
• Infographic – How Much Should Your Online Article Cost
• Content Writer’s Spec (use this template to describe your job to your copywriter)
• Watch how people use your website with ClickTale (you’ll notice they scan and jump around, just like Jennifer described in the interview).
• The SmallBiz WordPress Theme – transform your WordPress blog into a Small Business Website.

Listen to the Podcast about Content Marketing

You can listen to the podcast by clicking the play button at the top of this post. Or you can download the MP3 audio file by clicking the download link if you’re like me and you listen to interviews on your iPod/iPhone in the car.

Complete Written Transcript of the Podcast

“Right Click” here to download the PDF transcript.

Thank you for listening!

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For everyone in the retail trade, whether online or from a traditional storefront, the last decade has been an avalanche of innovations in how commerce is conducted.

The Internet was the instrument of change and software programmers and designers wasted no time panning for gold in the multitude of opportunities flowing by in these oceans of change.

The phrase “e-commerce” has grown in importance over time, necessitating the need for an online presence, both to augment existing sales while delivering products down an exciting new channel to the ultimate consumer.

As with any activity involving the exchange of money, the criminal element in our society was quick to step up their game as well, inflicting fraud upon the scene and demanding a focus on security and safety.

Will Mobile Commerce Take the Place of Ecommerce?

Most of the dust created by this massive change has settled but futurists are now pointing to mobile, suggesting that the letter “m” will soon replace “e”, when it comes to significance in the commercial arena.

Is this just more marketing hype from hardware and software providers or is there real substance to this “Brave New World”?

The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) is a membership association devoted to helping “the entire community of merchants assess current opportunities, review potential benefits and risks, and decide what proper courses of action to consider for both the near and long term.”

In that regard, they recently released a set of new resources, designed to educate all merchants and defuse the marketing hype that is prevalent in today’s press (if you wish to read more, click here).

The ETA published two whitepapers on the topic of mobile payments. The first one provides a brief outline and discourse on the key topics that will concern every merchant in today’s retail community.

The second paper broadens the discussion by expanding the amount of subject matter in a number of high profile areas. After a brief status overview, the next three sections address the real concerns going forward:

1. Understanding merchant risks and costs;
2. Questions to consider before deploying mobile payments, and
3. Mobile payment technologies.

The Impact of Smartphone Technology

The impetus for change is clearly smartphone technology. These new phones, roughly 30% of all cell phones and more than 50% of new sales, are equipped with a complex operating system that allows for easy access to the Internet and the local processing of
sophisticated software applications.

Designers are hard at work connecting the universe of social networking tools to promote instant marketing, based on your previous buying preferences, right down to the palm of your hand.

The new wave of innovation is being called “Interactive POS Marketing” or “Universal Commerce”, to name a few terms that have already been created. If you combine these facts with the latest prediction from the respected Gartner research firm that 1.2 billion smartphones and tablets will be sold globally in 2013, after sales of 821 billion were recorded in 2012, then it is not too difficult to see what all the fuss is about.

M-Commerce is More than Consumer-based Options

Much of the marketing hype surrounds consumer-based solutions. Most of these are in their early development stage. If all things go as planned, the best timeframe suggested is 3 to 5 years for complete implementation of m-commerce.

The good news for small business owners is that this lengthy period will allow plenty of time for planning, determining the best technologies and then upgrading later to the correct equipment and software that should stand the test of time.

The excitement today, however, is around remote merchant processing. These new solutions have been thoroughly tested and have evolved gradually over the past decade from a set of clunky, cumbersome devices to one single, simple device that plugs
into the earphone socket of your smartphone.

Your merchant processor will supply a software app that will connect to his servers and then you are off and running. You will also benefit from the lowest discount fees in the industry since the cardholder will be present and the same device will read the stripe on his card.

Change is coming and having a merchant processor that can support both your current and long-term needs will be paramount.