A website is becoming an essential part of marketing for every small business. “How to choose the best small business web hosting service?” is a question that every business owner needs to answer before setting up a website for the first time.

There are a lot of companies out there that are offering a wide variety of web hosting packages. The last thing that you want happening is to end up with a problematic package after all the time and confusion that you are going through right now.

With that in mind, let’s quickly move onto the list of things that you should look into before passing your credit card information to any of the hosting companies.

What to Look at?

Types of Hosting Package

Although the specific offerings may be different, the types of hosting packages can be broadly categorized into the following:

Shared Hosting

Many small and medium-sized businesses will probably end up using a shared hosting package because of its affordability. Additionally, a shared hosting package is usually more than enough to cope with the traffic that most websites receive.

Signing up for a shared hosting package will place your website on a server shared among other customers who are also subscribed to the same package. An affordable price for such packages can be offered because the server costs are shared among customers hosted on that server.

Since the server resources are shared, the performance of your website might be negatively impacted if other websites hosted on the same server receive a sharp increase in resource utilization. The usual causes for the increase includes traffic spikes, problematic website software or hacking attempts.

If you are familiar enough with web hosting, and understand what types of operating system and software are best for your servers and websites, a shared hosting package may not be for you. Almost every hosting company want a stable server environment for customers sharing the same server. Thus, installation of special software or operating systems is strictly not allowed on a shared server.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting can be expensive as it involves the leasing of an entire server. It is only for small businesses that are expecting a high volume of daily visitors to their website or e-commerce businesses that are planning to process commercial transactions in a more secure environment.

With dedicated hosting, performance capabilities of the leased server is enjoyed by your website entirely. Slowdowns or downtimes caused by usage spikes on another website should be rare. Small businesses with sufficient IT professionals will also be able to enjoy more flexibility in terms of hardware specifications as well as the installation of custom operating systems and software.

A dedicated hosting package can either be managed or unmanaged. This dictates the level of support and scope for server management service. Although there is no industry-defined scope for server management, you can always do your research and sign up for managed hosting packages that are transparent about their offerings.

Virtual Private Server (VPS)

A VPS is a package that positions itself between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Although you may be sharing the same physical server with other websites, the available resources on the server are divided accordingly, either at the hardware or software level.

Without shelling out hefty sums of monthly hosting fee for a dedicated hosting package, a VPS allows you to have a hosting package that is safer and more stable than a shared hosting package.

Operating Systems

While shopping for the right small business hosting package, you will come across two major operating systems – Linux and Windows.

Although the operating system does not have a huge impact for HTML websites, it comes into the picture if you decide to use website software that only works on either of the operating systems.

For example, if you are setting up your small business website using WordPress, you will need a hosting package that uses a Linux server. This is because Linux servers support the usage of PHP (a programming language) in WordPress.

Control Panels

cPanel is the control panel used in many web hosting packages. Even so, custom control panels with complicated layouts are still preferred by some of the hosting companies.

Navigating around the control panel and guessing which icon or button relates to the execution of a desired function can be a waste of time. You might even break something unintentionally.

Before signing up with a web host, beginners are advised to scan through the onboarding guides in order to gauge the user-friendliness of the control panel adopted. Referring to relevant tutorials before performing any tasks or actions using the control panel is also an advisable move to avoid unnecessary errors.

Disk Storage / Disk Space

Like a computer, the disk storage and disk space offered by a web host refers to the size and volume of files and databases that can be stored onto a server. Depending on your business, the need for storage may vary.

To illustrate, a videography business that is planning to store high definition videos using its server will require a large disk space. To get started, most small business websites do not need to have a large disk space and the allocated storage volume can always be increased when the need arises in the future.

Even though a lot of web hosts are claiming that they offer unlimited storage through shared hosting packages. you should be reminded that “unlimited storage” does not necessarily mean “infinite storage”. As explained earlier, the resources on a shared hosting server are allotted between a number of customers.

If your website is taking up excessive storage space on a shared server and starts causing issue for other customers, your host will step in with a suggestion to move your website onto a dedicated server.

Bandwidth

“Bandwidth”, in networking terms, refers to how fast data can be transferred across a network. In the world of web hosting, it refers to the amount of data transfers allowed.

Unless you are going to upload and serve video content using your server or have a highly visited website from the start, which are both unlikely in most cases, the basic bandwidth offerings should be sufficient. Similar to disk storage, you can always upgrade for a higher bandwidth limit.

Again, despite the fact that almost every shared hosting package claims to offer unlimited bandwidth, keep in mind that because server resources are shared, you will not get infinite bandwidth. Your web host will reach out and move your website onto a dedicated server if its bandwidth usage is consuming a lot of resources on a shared server.

Uptime / Stability

Uptime is the amount of time when your server is up and running without any problems. Some web hosts go the extra mile by providing a network uptime guarantee.

For example, a 99.9% uptime guarantee implies that in a 30-day month, if the server goes down for an accumulated period of longer than 43 minutes and 12 seconds within the 30-day window (calculated using Ez Uptime Calculator), your hosting fee for the month will be refunded. However, this usually excludes downtime caused by scheduled server maintenance and issues with scripts or website software.

On a dedicated hosting package, hosting fees are usually prorated and refunded to customers for the amount of downtime that happened within a billing period.

A simple Google search for “[name of web hosting company] uptime” will reveal customer service threads on the issue, how the company handles downtime and how easy it is to claim for a refund.

Customer Service

Placing your website on a server belonging to a web host that offers outstanding customer service should be of the highest priority, especially if you know nothing when it comes to web hosting and managing a website.

Apart from being there to guide you on selecting the right package to sign up with, a customer service representative should also be helpful when you face problems with your website.

The best way to obtain insights on a web host’s customer service track records is to perform searches containing keywords such as “issues”, “complaints”, “help” and some other similar keywords together with the name of the host. Doing so will reveal customer service threads on forums maintained by the web host, which should give an idea of how existing customers are treated. Of course, only hosting companies that are proud of their customer service standards will make their forum threads public.

Another thing to look at is the accessibility of customer support. Do they only provide email support? Do they have a phone number that you can call and speak to a real person? Do they provide 24/7 live chat support for prompt assistance?

To learn more about the responsiveness of hosting companies in supporting inquiries, you can perform a test by calling the customer support numbers with a few “dummy questions” in mind. After a couple of calls with different hosting services, you should be able to judge on the quality of customer service provided.

Reviews

Today, before purchasing an item or signing up for a service, it is very common for us to read up on product reviews published by reputable outlets.

In the world of web hosting, things can be a little different. You need to take extra precaution when reading reviews that you come across on the Internet. The primary aim of many web hosting review websites is to earn a commission from your signup with any of the suggested web hosts.

Only trust a review if both the pros and cons of a particular web host are explained thoroughly. More importantly, you should only place trust on websites with adequate disclosures regarding sponsored reviews and whether the independence of such reviews is affected by the commission payment. In a competitive market, it is hard to find a web hosting service or package that stands out from the rest and comes without any flaws.

If you have friends or business connections with a website, you can always ask for their recommendations together with their experiences with different web hosting services. These are often more reliable, and he or she might even be able to provide the necessary guidance to get you started.

Onboarding Tutorials

Setting up a server can be daunting for first timers. Before signing up, make sure that you have spent time browsing through the tutorials and help articles provided by the web host.

Are the tutorials comprehensive enough? Are they documented in your preferred medium (text, video or printable notes)? Since the clarity and comprehensiveness of tutorials are so important for beginners, it is better to avoid hosting companies that restrict their tutorials from public viewing.

Price

“You get what you pay for.”

There are a lot of services that offer free hosting. Even though not paying anything for hosting sounds attractive, websites hosted on these services often have spammy and intrusive ads, buggy features, as well as customer support that is almost non-existent.

Today, web hosting packages are priced competitively. In many cases, levels of hardware specification is the only differentiation for the varied fees.

To save money, sign up for hosting packages with a free trial or a heavily-discounted hosting fee for the first month. During the trial or the first month with discounted fees, familiarize yourself with the control panel’s interface as much as possible and understand what you will be paying for with the full price.

Another way to save on hosting fees is to do a simple search for coupon or voucher codes that you can use during the process of signing up.

Signing up for longer periods ranging from 3 months to 3 years instead of paying the fees on a monthly basis will attract lower prices. However, if you are unfamiliar with a hosting service, it is not advisable to sign up for long periods and pay a huge amount upfront. With some hosting companies, you might face difficulties in getting a refund in the event of any unexpected issues.

Accepted Payment Methods

Credit cards are widely accepted by hosting providers.

If you do not have a credit card due to personal finance issues or age limitations, you can find out from the shortlisted hosting providers on whether payment options such as PayPal or check, are accepted.

Some web hosts will have an optional feature of charging your credit card or PayPal account automatically every time hosting fees are due. This can help to save time and take away the hassle of logging into the billing account just to make payments.

Backups

Backing up files and databases is a periodical activity to prevent significant loss of data in the event of a server crash, hacking attempt or technical error.

Although the responsibility primarily lies on our shoulders as website owners, it is a plus if our web hosting package includes scheduled data backup. Scheduled data backups become very useful when we forgot to perform a backup on our end, and unwanted events, such as a server crash or a successful hacking attempt, take place.

A lot of web hosts do not promote the fact that they are backing up your data even though most of them do. The best way to find out is to ask them about it together with the relevant fees that will be charged for data recovery.

Software Compatibility

Website software can be content management systems such as WordPress or Drupal, forum software such as vBulletin or phpBB and e-commerce software such as Magento or osCommerce. These software may require different server specifications in order to run flawlessly.

Remember to check with the hosting company on whether the website software that you are planning to use is compatible with the hosting package that you are signing up for.

If the technical support team is familiar and experienced enough with a website software, additional support related to the installation and maintenance of the software will be of great help in the future, especially when there is a need for upgrading or debugging.

Website Builder

A website builder is offered by many web hosts as a complementary feature. Although it may not have the robust features of a content management software like WordPress, the website builder should be sufficient for non-techie business owners that only require a 5-page HTML website.

There are also services out there that position themselves as website builders that offers web hosting, easy-to-use customization options and a gallery of design templates. The monthly fees of these services may be slightly more expensive than those offered by web hosting companies. Even so, because of their easy-to-use interface, business owners who don’t want to spend extra cash on web design are more than willing to pay for such services.

Server Location

The location of a server refers to the location of where your website is hosted. Visitors will experience a faster loading time if your website is hosted at a location near to them.

For example, if most of the visitors to your small business website will be from New York, it is unwise to sign up with a web host in Singapore and have your website hosted in the country.

To a certain extent, search engines may rely on server location to determine the relevance of a website for search queries entered by its users.

Upgrading / Downgrading Options

How easy it is to upgrade or downgrade from your existing hosting package?

As your website becomes popular, a seamless transfer to a more powerful hosting plan is always preferred. On the other hand, a downgrade to a cheaper plan should be simple and easy if your website does not require the amount of resources that you have planned for.

Check with the customer service representatives. They should be able to provide the necessary procedures to upgrade or downgrade your existing hosting package.

Transfer Process

When you become familiar with the ins and outs of website management, you will need to make decisions about switching to a better package that could be offered by another hosting company.

Will your current host allow for the transfer to go ahead without any hiccups? Will it incur extra charges? Will there be terms and conditions that you have to fulfill as a customer? Are there any transfer problems encountered by existing customers?

The answer to these questions should be available under the Help section on the official websites of hosting companies. Of course, you can always direct the question to customer service representatives helping out with pre-sales questions.

How to Find Them?

Looking for the perfect small business web hosting service is not hard at all. There are a number of ways that can get you started:

Friend or Influencer Recommendations

Friends who own and run websites are more than willing to share their experience with different web hosting companies. Ask for their recommendations and learn about things that you should be aware of with web hosting packages.

Most influencers today have a website that helps to build their authority and influence on the Internet. If none of your friends own or run a self-hosted website, you can always approach individuals whom you look up to or learn from that own a website.

Search Engines

People love to write about their experience with web hosting companies, whether on their own blogs, review sites or discussion forums. You should be able to find all these by performing simple searches using search engines.

You can even search for a web hosting company that is the best in offering your requirements and specifications.

In order to corroborate findings, always make sure that you have read enough pros and cons about a particular hosting service before making any purchase decision.

Websites You Love

Another way to find out and decide which web hosting service should you sign up for is by looking at which hosting company are your favorite websites using. Your small business website may not be flooded with visitors but the hosting company that they are using may offer light usage packages for users like yourself.

You can identify the hosting company powering your favorite websites by performing a WHOIS search. You can also browse to the footer section where most websites will disclose, either voluntarily or sponsored, the web hosting company that they are using.

What Can Go Wrong?

As a reminder of why signing up with the right hosting provider is crucial, here are some of the things that could go wrong with a bad provider:

Prolonged Website Downtime

We don’t want to see our website goes down. A few minutes of downtime is acceptable but some companies, due to the lack of knowledge and experience with server issues, will prolong the time needed to get the downed server back online.

What if your website is the top sales driver? Do you want to see it go down during peak hours of the day when sales inquiries are coming in?

Lousy and Unhelpful Customer Support

The last thing that you want to face when a problem arises is to be served by a customer support representative who does not understand your problem and has no idea on how to solve the issue.

This will stall your progress and delay the time needed to get things done. The really bad ones may even offer the wrong solution that will cause even more trouble.

Overpayment

As a small business, we need to be concerned about our budget and spending. You certainly don’t want to pay for features that you don’t need or something that you can get at a cheaper price elsewhere.

Limited Upgrading / Downgrading Options

Extending from the previous point, we don’t want to pay for features that we don’t use. Nevertheless, it is hard to determine future usage. Some web hosts can be very restrictive about plan changes. Extra fees that can be as high as double your monthly hosting fees may be imposed for every upgrade, downgrade or other changes made to your initial package.

Recommended Web Hosts for Small Businesses

Looking for some recommendations to get you started? Here are some popular web hosting services among small business owners:

HostGator

HostGator (ad) is a popular hosting provider for small businesses. The basic plan, Hatchling, offers unlimited bandwidth and storage, together with a free domain name for $7.16 per month.

Use the voucher code, “SPROUTGEEK” (without the quotes), during your purchase and your hosting fee for the first month will only be $0.01.

The reason why they become the preferred web hosting service for many small businesses is because they offer shared hosting packages with 24/7/365 live chat and telephone support, 99.9% uptime guarantee and flexible payment options.

The only downside is that it charges a higher fee for additional domain names as compared to other domain registrars. Nevertheless, it is perfectly fine to use another domain registrar and still host your website with HostGator if you are attracted to its high quality customer service.

BlueHost

Bluehost (ad) is highly preferred among bloggers and it is one of the three hosting services recommended by popular open source blogging and content management software, WordPress.

Like HostGator, it offers unlimited storage and bandwidth. It also gets good feedback from existing clients about its customer service with email, phone and live chat support.

With Bluehost, there is no option to pay your hosting fees on a monthly basis.

To sign up for the shared hosting plan, you are required to pay for either 12 months ahead at $6.95 per month (initial payment of $83.40), 24 months ahead at $5.95 per month (initial payment of $142.80) or 36 months ahead at the lowest fee of $4.95 per month (initial payment of $178.20).

DreamHost

DreamHost (ad) is another web hosting provider recommended by WordPress. Apart from the usual unlimited storage and bandwidth, DreamHost stands out among the competition by offering a 1-Click Installer for the most used applications online such as blogging software, photo galleries, wikis, calendar software, e-commerce software, content management systems and many more.

DreamHost also provides a whopping 97-day money back guarantee and a 100% uptime guarantee, which are both rare offerings in the world of web hosting companies.

Despite the set of appealing features, the price of the hosting plans are considered high as compared to other services. To make things worse, there is no option to pay for your hosting on a monthly basis.

DreamHost’s shared hosting plan costs $8.95 per month if you pay 2 years in advance (initial payment of $214.80) and $9.95 per month if you pay 1 year in advance (initial payment of $119.40).

Recommended Website Builders with Hosting Package

Website builders come and go. The key is to choose one that provides great customer support, constantly introducing new features and has a sustainable business model.

Many small business owners want to build a formidable online presence but to them, web hosting services are useless. They still need the tools that can build them a website. The following website builders come with attractive features. Some even offer a free trial or a free plan so potential customers like yourself can try them out.

Squarespace

Starting at $10 month-to-month, Squarespace is a full featured website builder. From a HTML website to a full-fledged e-commerce store, you can build any website with any design you want, without having to deal with the technicalities of managing a hosting account.

The service is built for both beginners and advanced website experts. If you have no idea at all about designing a website, Squarespace has templates for any major content type. Each of these templates will fit nicely into the screen of mobile devices. For the pros, it offers a template editor and a variety of options for extensive styling.

Although there is a 14-day free trial, a free plan is not available.

Weebly

Weebly (ad) is a website builder that offers a simple drag-and-drop design interface to assist you in designing high quality websites.

Although they are not as good as the ones offered by Squarespace, the set of mobile responsive templates are functional and highly suitable for small business websites.

There is a free plan for users to try building a website with Weebly. The Starter package, which costs $4 per month, comes with custom branding options, enhanced site stats and premium support while the Pro package, which costs $8 per month, unlocks all available features.

One of the cons of Weebly is that it only provides email support, which is going to be a pain for customers that prefer to be served via phone or live chat.

Webs

Apart from offering mobile responsive templates (at the point of writing, the number of templates offered are lesser than those offered by other website builders) and easy-to-use, drag-and-drop design interface, Webs (ad) allows users to incorporate advanced features such as an e-commerce store, forum, or even a membership area right into a website.

Webs also integrates well with many third party applications that allow for features such as appointment setting, calendaring, podcasting, video blogging and many more. It comes with a free plan that injects ads into the mobile version of your website. The premium plans range from $3.75 per month to $16.67 per month, each with differences in features such as storage and bandwidth limits as well as the level of support provided.

Webs may disappoint advanced users because the service does not allow for custom CSS styling and code editing.

Recommended Books

If you are interested in understanding and learning more about web hosting and website building, there are a couple of books that you can refer to for guidance.

Web Hosting for Dummies

With Web Hosting for Dummies by Peter Pollock (ad), you will learn basic and advanced web hosting jargons apart from those mentioned in this article. Some of the advanced areas include SSL certificates (to set up a secure environment for e-commerce or confidential transactions), database management, scripts and more.

The good thing about the book is that it describes technical hosting jargons in simple English. The book is only recommended for small business owners who are seeking to understand more about web hosting in order to facilitate the need of building a more advanced website down the road.

Building Websites All-in-One for Dummies

To start, Building Websites All-in-One for Dummies by David Karlins and Doug Shahlin (ad) has 800+ pages, offered in 10 minibooks covering topics from website design, website features, form management, commonly used scripts, site management and many more.

For small business owners, the book is going to act as a reference rather than a one time read. Furthermore, the book is good in helping readers understand the basic concepts of building and managing a website. Upon completing the book, you should also be able to gain ideas on which areas are worth exploring to help improve your current website.

Ask Questions!

Do you have any feedback about the guide above? Have you come across any problems or questions when choosing the best web hosting service for your business? Share them in the comment section below and let us lend a helping hand.

Image courtesy of Leonardo Rizzi, Stuart Chalmers, getButterfly and alanclarkdesign

Adrian Oh of webShaper

Adrian Oh, Director of Business Development at webShaper, an e-commerce store solution, who is also an entrepreneur with a deep interest in the Malaysian e-commerce scene, shared with me some of his insights on the current e-commerce landscape in Malaysia and how businesses can enter the space with a higher chance of succeeding.

E-Commerce Trends in Malaysia and Key Driving Factors

Wayne: Since you are in the trenches of selling e-commerce software to SMBs considering about setting up their e-commerce presence online, are you seeing more of them getting into the space in 2013?

Adrian: Yes, definitely. This is driven by a number of factors. First of all, it is the successes seen on group buying sites in Malaysia, starting with Groupsmore (acquired by and renamed to Groupon in early 2011) and then Everyday.com.my (renamed to LivingSocial in early 2012). These daily deal sites made small business owners see the possibility of e-commerce in Malaysia and the fact that Malaysians are actually buying products and services online.

Adrian: Before this, there were a lot of e-commerce skeptics, even among successful entrepreneurs and retailers, in Malaysia. They don’t believe that Malaysians will buy their products online. Seeing the successes of group buying sites opened them up to the idea.

Adrian: Of course, the initial cost of setting up an e-commerce presence 10 years ago is around MYR20,000 to MYR50,000. Today, if you are utilizing a solution like webShaper, the cost is as low as MYR1 a day so it is definitely worth a try for businesses.

Adrian: Moreover, the retail space rental is trending upwards every year, creating pressure on retailers to either drive more shoppers to their physical store or to explore an alternative source of revenue, which can be their online store. All of these factors contributed highly to the trend of small businesses setting up an online e-commerce store.

Difficulties and Concerns about Setting Up an E-Commerce Store

Wayne: What are some of the problems or concerns that a small business owner may have when they are considering about setting up an e-commerce store?

Adrian: There are a lot concerns. The first one will be finding the right people to manage the online store. Individuals who possess the right skills are hard to find in Malaysia and many of them tend to choose the path of starting their own business.

Adrian: Small businesses that are looking to outsource the management of their online store, which may include tasks such as uploading of product information and customer service, will find the option too costly. Also, taking such a path will only allow the online store to grow up to a certain level. For example, the level of customer service that can be provided by third party providers is fairly limited and it is not going to be as seamless as handling it internally.

Adrian: The third concern will be the traffic to their online store. Traffic is not free and hasn’t been free. If there is no budget to drive traffic, there will be no revenue. There are a lot of available options such as Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, search engine optimization and many others when it comes to online marketing. Deciding on how to effectively drive traffic using any of the mentioned channels will remain as a challenge for many.

Wayne: What about concerns around logistics?

Adrian: It depends largely on what you are trying to sell. Let me give you an example. We had a prospect who was trying to sell bean bags online. There was no logistics company that is willing to deliver his products. Even if he got one which was willing to do the delivery, the price quoted was simply too costly to be absorbed by himself or to be passed on to the customers.

Adrian: Businesses should also look at how consumers prefer to shop for their products or services. We recently had another prospect who was trying to sell wallpapers with an online store. What I shared with them is that they should look at how consumers usually shop for wallpapers. Most wallpaper buyers don’t measure their own wall and purchase the wallpaper rolls without any form of consultation. They prefer to have a consultant advising them on the design and measurements, subsequently providing them with a quote, before proceeding to accept their payment via a wirelessly-connected credit card terminal.

Adrian: The same applies for websites that are trying to sell glasses online. Most Malaysians prefer to go through the process of examining our eyes before buying a pair of glasses, which usually come in both the frame and a pair of lenses. In other countries, the buying process is separated. Consumers would go to an optometrist to get the measurements of their eye condition before proceeding to a retail outlet, either online or offline, to purchase the glasses. Of course, in such countries, selling glasses online is a better idea.

Marketing Tips for Your New E-Commerce Store

Adrian: Let’s talk about marketing too, which I almost forgot to mention about. We talked a lot about discoverability recently. Do you understand your target market? Where are they? What kind of keywords they are using to search for your products online? Then, it comes down to utilizing the right tools to drive traffic. Most newcomers don’t have any idea about this so I think marketing should actually be the top concern for them apart from the things that I mentioned earlier.

Wayne: You said that most e-commerce newcomers don’t have the knowledge and experience when it comes to online marketing. As you also mentioned earlier that finding the right talent to assist them with the store can be quite hard, do you have any tips for them?

Adrian: Here’s what I normally share with them. Once you are done with the setting up of a webstore, the first thing you should consider doing is to have a store opening promotion, where you will offer great deals on some of the products that you are selling. The purpose of this is to build the initial customer base.

Adrian: Secondly, you have to promote the store opening deals. When a business open up its brick-and-mortar store, there will be an opening promotion. What makes it think that for the online version of the store, there is no need for such a promotion? Unless you carry the iPhone 6 right now, it is hard for a new store to convince people to visit and buy something if the products are sold at the usual retail price.

Adrian: Also, I always advise our customers to setup a Facebook page and advertise the page together with the deals that they are having. This is because setting up a Facebook page is easy. It is free and it can help new e-commerce stores build trust. When people buy things from marketplaces like eBay and Lelong, it is natural that they look at the seller ratings and judge whether they should do business with the seller.

Adrian: Building trust is something that a website cannot do easily. Store owners can start by publishing Facebook posts that are personal and authentic. It could be how your physical store looks like or a guide on how to use your products. Of course, when there is a question from the fans, there should be a timely reply. Malaysian consumers always visit the Facebook page of an online store these days to learn how the business is interacting with its customers. It is fine to have complaints but treat each of them professionally to show that you are real, and you care.

Adrian: Once you have a presence on Facebook, consider setting up a presence on websites with high traffic. For example, you can consider setting up a seller account on eBay or Lelong together with accounts on classified sites such as OLX or Mudah.my. Put up a listing of products that are in-demand so that when a sale happens, you can write an email to the customer, letting him or her know that for future purchases, he or she can go directly to your webstore.

Adrian: Then, you can consider about using Google AdWords. For our customers, we often recommend that they should start by thinking about the keywords that users will normally type into Google when searching for their products. From there, register for a free AdWords account and gather a list of about 50 to 100 keywords. There are a lot of video tutorials on this.

Adrian: Apart from all the tips that I mentioned, the single most important thing will be your products. If you are offering a generic product that everybody else is also selling, it doesn’t matter how much you have invested in advertising or marketing, it will come down to a price competition. The conversion rates are probably not going to be as good too. Try to sell something unique. For example, if you are selling coffee beans, become a coffee expert that sells more than a hundred different types of coffee bean. The way you come up with content, the way you distribute and the way you position yourself as a coffee expert will get you the sales.

The Importance of Customer Service

Wayne: Let’s talk about customer service for a moment. How important is customer service in the Malaysian e-commerce space?

Adrian: All of us are consumers. How would we like to be treated? Just think along this line and you will not go wrong. For example, if you send an inquiry, the ideal time for the store to respond should be the same day, if not, the next day. If a customer gets angry and tries to complain, over the phone or over email, never reply in text only. They will not be able to hear your tone or see your body language. Give them a call. This is how we do it and how we advised our clients to do when it comes to serving their customers.

Adrian: Be responsive, ensure that customers are being notified of each process that their orders are going through and always make sure that complaints are being replied promptly. It’s not too hard. The problem in Malaysia is that most e-commerce store owners don’t bother to reply. If you make an effort to reply or even better, follow up with a call, you will be seen as providing up-to-par customer service.

Giant E-Commerce Players and Their Impact on the Ecosystem

Wayne: Over the past couple of years, there were a lot of “giant competitors” entering Malaysia’s e-commerce space. More recently, we are also seeing Tesco entering the scene. How do you think their entry will impact the industry in general?

Adrian: I try to take the long term view on this. Most of these big guys bring in the capital. Capital is always needed to grow an industry at its infancy. Money will be spent on recruitment and training when they penetrate the market. Also, they will bring in the much needed expertise and know-how from overseas. Tesco has been selling groceries online since 2000. When they decided to do it here in Malaysia, it will only make the market better.

Adrian: A lot of Malaysians are reluctant to buy online because of trust issues. Once these big guys train them up, showing them that it is actually okay to buy online, they will be more ready to buy from smaller guys, knowing what they should be expecting.

Adrian: The smaller guys will have to compete differently with the giants. You can either go small and niche-focused or go big and broad like Tesco. Even though Tesco is huge, they will not be able to carry all the products in the world. The same even applies for Amazon and this is why we have all the marketplaces that provide smaller sellers a place to sell their niche products.

Adrian: To me, the competition for the small guys is real but looking from the big picture, it will help to bring up the whole industry.

Examples of Malaysian-Based E-Commerce Stores that Get It

Wayne: What are some of the Malaysian-based e-commerce stores that are doing things the right way?

RC Smart

Adrian: There are a few among our clients that are doing quite well. Let me highlight why they are doing well. First, take a look at RC Smart. The reason why they are doing well is because they are utilizing the online store as a complement to their physical store.

Adrian: The parts installed on a remote-controlled plane or helicopter may need maintenance once a in while. What RC Smart does is that it advises its customers to purchase the parts online so that they can avoid the hassle of visiting the store. They also use the webstore solution for inventory count by putting all the SKUs online. They have been around for years and a lot of community-driven activities were organized by them so most of their online customers are actually existing customers.

Al-Humaira Contemporary

Adrian: Al-Humaira Contemporary is another example of an e-commerce store that is doing well. They started out as a blogshop, which is a store that many tried setting up using blogging platforms such as Blogger.

Adrian: What they are doing differently from others is that they shoot very nice and outstanding product photos. Of course, they created their own brand with the blogshop but the product photos featured on the store and their Facebook page are some of the best that I’ve seen among online shopping malls in Malaysia. They invested a lot in photo-shooting sessions and in getting beautiful models to pose with their products.

TAT7 iPhone Case

Adrian: Other than the ones above, I always like to talk about TAT7. The guy behind it, Tatt Chua, is a Malaysian entrepreneur and he invented a waterproof iPhone case that allows users or more specifically, scuba divers, to shoot underwater photos. This is a great example of product uniqueness. When they come to us, I couldn’t find a product anywhere online that is similar to his invention. We helped him do a quick survey, advised him in pricing the product and suggested him to target the international market.

Adrian: At that time, I shared two potential marketing strategies with him. First of all, since the product is unique, websites like CNET, Gizmodo, The Verge and other similar gadget sites are definitely more than willing to do a post on the product. Secondly, I shared with him that in order to sell a new product overseas, a good way will be to sell it on local group buying sites in different international locations. The purpose here is not to discount the price heavily to move inventory but to get more people to know about the product, and to introduce it to early adopters across the globe that are willing to buy and use it.

Adrian: He didn’t really need paid advertisements such as Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. He got the reviews he needed and sales started flowing in. Within 30 days after the initial launch, with almost zero marketing cost, sales surpassed $100,000. He even had an iPhone app developed for free by fans of the product.

Advice for Young Entrepreneurs in E-Commerce

Adrian: For the young guys out there, I shared an example of a retailer, which is RC Smart, an example of a store which developed their own brand like Al-Humairah, and of course, an inventor, which is TAT7. There are all these possibilities with e-commerce but none of them is easy. Everything has to start small and has to start somewhere. It will take years before it can become an established business that will keep growing. The failure rate today is still very high.

The Future of E-Commerce in Malaysia

Wayne: Where do you see e-commerce in Malaysia growing in the next one or two years?

Adrian: It will be about building the trust that consumers have with online shopping. In the next one or two years, I think we will definitely see more merchants coming in, big or small, but they will still face the same problems with talent and know-how. There will be opportunities for providers like us too. Of course, it depends on whether they are willing to spend with us since SMEs are sometimes a little tight with their budget.

Wayne: Alright, Adrian. I think that’s all for the interview. Thank you for everything that you have shared with us today.

Adrian: No problem. Do let me know if you have more questions. Thank you.

Do You Run an E-Commerce Store? Share It with Us!

This is our second interview with a Malaysian-based local entrepreneur (the first was with the co-founder of Piktochart – Ai Ching) and it is always insightful speaking to local entrepreneurs that are trying hard to make something happen.

With so many businesses trying to enter the market, either as a merchant or by developing technologies that will help improve the online shopping experience and the operational side of things, the e-commerce space never fails to excite aspiring and current entrepreneurs. This is the main reason why we had this interview with Adrian, and we hope you enjoyed the tips and insights shared by him.

Do you have any question for Adrian about running or growing your e-commerce store? Share the link to your store, whether it is based in Malaysia or not, together with your question for Adrian, in the comment section below.

Image courtesy of Mikey Jones and Keoni Cabral

In this interview, Fergal Crawley, the Owner and Community Manager of Business Advice Forum, shares the lessons he learned from building an active forum on the Internet.

Do you own a community or forum that is nothing but a ghost town? Are you finding it hard to promote your community because of a low budget? Are you staying away from building a forum simply because it looks hard?

Grab a pen and paper immediately because what Fergal is sharing in this interview are going to be useful for any of you who is considering about building an online community or forum from scratch.

Introduction to Fergal Crawley and Business Advice Forum

Wayne: Today, I am glad to have Fergal Crawley, the Owner and Community Manager of Business Advice Forum for an interview on how to build a forum from scratch.

Fergal: Thank you very much for taking the time to interview me. I hope that your readers enjoy the interview and find something of benefit in it.

Wayne: Fergal, can you briefly introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what Business Advice Forum is all about?

Fergal: I’m from Co Louth in Ireland and after having spent a few years living abroad, I’m currently living back in my hometown. My career background is in the areas of management, marketing and enterprise development, and I have worked in the customer contact centre, enterprise development, property development and Internet industries.

Fergal: After finishing school I did a degree in marketing and I have recently completed a higher diploma in computer science. I’m self-employed, and I work hard to develop and grow a small number of websites.

Fergal: Business Advice Forum is an online community of small business owners and those who are planning on starting their own business. Many of our members are working on online businesses but we also welcome those who are interested in traditional and home-based businesses.

Wayne: In this interview, we are going to focus on how to build an active forum or community online but first, how did the idea of creating Business Advice Forum come about and how long has it been since you started the forum?

Fergal: The forum opened in November 2007, so we are just over six years old. Business Advice Forum has grown slowly and steadily over that time, to our current level where we have almost 35,000 signed up members.

Wayne: Do you mind sharing with us the current growth rate of the forum?

Fergal: The forum is growing very well at the moment. In Dec 2011 we had 31,000+ unique visitors, 45,000+ unique visitors in December 2012 and over 48,000 unique visitors in January this year.

Social Networks vs Forums

Wayne: With so many social networks popping up and getting all the attention, why do you think forums are still a better way to host communities?

Fergal: Social networking sites are a great way to maintain contact with people that you know. For example, I enjoy using Facebook to keep in contact with people I know locally, people I know from college and people I worked with in the past. However, the strength of forums is that they provide an excellent way for strangers with a common interest in a particular topic, to come together to share their knowledge and to help, support and advise each other.

Signing Up New Forum Members

Wayne: Setting up a forum is easy but once everything is up and running, the question of how to get people to sign up comes. How did you manage to get the first group of users to register?

Fergal: When I first launched Business Advice Forum, I ran a contest with a cash prize for our most helpful member, in the first month. The contest was promoted by way of forum posts on other forums, related to the topic. This contest was very successful and attracted members who were both active and quality contributors to their fellow members.

Wayne: What do you think has been the most appealing element of Business Advice Forum that attracted new visitors to sign up?

Fergal: Members join the forum for a broad range of reasons. From my experience, the three main reasons they decide to join are the following:

• They have a question, and they want to get opinions and information to help them decide on an answer.
• They have an area of knowledge, and they want to share that knowledge with others so that they can help others but also improve their own knowledge by using it and the learning that evolves from discussing a topic with others.
• To promote their own website or small business.

Fergal: We endeavor to do everything we can to make it easy for our new members to do all of the above and we have careful moderation in place to help ensure that the community is helpful and friendly at all times.

How to Drive Traffic to a Forum?

Wayne: Forums are great search engine traffic magnets. Apart from having key search engine optimization elements in place, how do you drive traffic to Business Advice Forum?

Fergal: Thankfully Business Advice Forum is ranked very well in Google and we receive a substantial amount of traffic from them.

Fergal: I also own a forum admin community at ForumPromotion.net. This community is an excellent place for forum owners to discuss forum ownership, get advice on forum administration and to promote their own forums. Business Advice Forum is promoted on Forum Promotion, and we do receive traffic and members from there. Other than that we don’t really do any other advertising to promote the community.

How to Get Forum Members to Participate Actively?

Wayne: One of the most common ways that I see many forum administrators recommend for boosting the number of posts on forums is to pay professional forum posters to seed or add to existing and new discussions. What did you do to maintain the activity on Business Advice Forum?

Fergal: As all forum owners know, stimulating and maintaining activity on a small and growing forum is a great challenge. We achieved this mostly through the contests we run on the forum and by being as helpful to our members as we possibly can. We provide our active members with opportunities to promote their business or website on the forum and this encourages them to return and maintain their activity.

Running Low Budget Forum Contests

Wayne: There are a number of member contests on Business Advice Forum. Is it a must to have these contests? Do you have any suggestions for starters who might be a little tight on their budget? Perhaps rewards other than cash might work?

Fergal: That’s a great question and the truth is that other types of contests could be even more successful than contests with cash prizes. Members like to be recognized for their positive contribution to the community and there are lots of prizes that forum owners can use, to give this recognition that don’t cost any money.

Members like to be recognized for their positive contribution to the community. – Click to Tweet!

Fergal: Prizes to consider are a special rank or badge on the forum, an advertising slot on the forum or other extras such as free premium membership or a colored username. These prizes don’t cost the forum owner anything, but can be highly valued by the members.

Fergal: Another option to consider is getting outsiders to sponsor a contest. For example, if you own a webmaster forum, new and smaller hosting companies will sometimes offer one of their hosting packages as a prize. The benefit to the forum owner is that they get a free prize and the hosting business benefits from the publicity they gain with their target audience.

Fergal: The webmaster forum is just one example, but the same concept can apply to almost any type of forum. Think about who is targeting your audience and ask if they would be willing to give a prize in return for the publicity and goodwill they will receive from a community of people in their target market.

How Active Should a Forum Administrator Be?

Wayne: Fergal, I noticed that you are actively participating in the discussions too as an administrator. How crucial is this in building a successful forum?

Fergal: My experience is that forums are just about the most difficult types of site to establish and grow. No one wants to join an empty or inactive forum, and that’s what you start out with when you first launch. It’s difficult enough to convince people to join and participate in a new community and I can only imagine that it must be next to impossible to achieve this on a community where you are not active yourself.

Fergal: Building a community takes a lot of work over a long period of time, to use a cliché, it’s a marathon not a sprint. As with anything else, it’s a lot easier to find the motivation to put in the work required, if you are interested in the subject yourself and keen to be an active member of the community.

Choosing the Right Moderators for Your Forum

Wayne: As an active member on a number of small business and marketing-related forums, I understand that having a great team of moderators is important to keep a community active. How did you come across your current moderator(s) and what are your selection criteria?

Fergal: Our moderators on Business Advice Forum do a fantastic job at controlling spam, helping to manage the community and keeping it moving forward. Our moderators are chosen from our member base and they are all people who have shown the following:

• Committed to the community.
• Believe in what we are doing.
• Polite and friendly.
• Always willing to help their fellow members.

Fergal: Those four things are what we look for most in our moderators and we don’t really have other skill sets that we necessarily require.

Handling Forum Spam

Wayne: Spam, especially SEO-related spam, is a huge problem for any forums and online communities. How much resources, time or money, are you spending on taking out spam? Do share with us if you have other mechanisms in place that are in place to help reduce spamming activities.

Fergal: Dealing with spam is indeed a constant battle and challenge. Spam comes in never ending waves – spammers post their junk on the site, we remove and find a way to block it, the spammers find a way round that block, they start posting again and so the cycle continues. It takes a huge amount of time to keep a step ahead of the spammers. We use a number of spam blocking mods and the one that has been most successful for us is Stop Forum Spam.

Future Plans for Business Advice Forum

Wayne: Moving forward, what are some of the plans that you have to boost Business Advice Forum’s growth?

Fergal: Business Advice Forum has grown by being as helpful as we can to our members and by making lots of small improvements along the way. It’s a process of constant adaptation and improvement. My plans are to continue with that approach, as opposed to making any radical changes.

Wayne: How can readers reach out to you if they are interested in learning more about building a forum or just to say thank you for doing this interview?

Fergal: Thanks again for taking the time to interview me. One thing I love about the Internet is the ability to meet and connect with others that have similar interests. I’d be delighted to hear from any of your readers through either Business Advice Forum or Forum Promotion (my username is Fergal on both of them), or via Twitter or LinkedIn.

Have You Tried Building a Forum?

Do you have any questions for Fergal? If you tried building an online community, do share with us your experience together with problems that you encountered along the way.

Are you part of a forum or online community? Take some time to share links to your profiles in the comment section below.

Image courtesy of kevin dooley

For those of us who are actively using it, this move by LinkedIn is taking away one of the best networking tool that allows us to showcase our expertise. Not too long ago, I even published The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn Answers, which aims to help marketers and small business owners to use it effectively for networking, influencers outreach and lead generation.

When the plan was announced, I came across a blog post written by Neal Schaffer that got me looking for alternatives immediately. Of course, there won’t be a service that completely mimics the soon-to-be-withdrawn feature but the following are services that are worthy enough for us to try.

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups is an immediate alternative that comes to mind. Using the search bar at the top right-hand corner of LinkedIn’s interface, you should be able to discover a handful of groups with like-minded members or members that are part of your target audience.

The Groups interface can be slightly complicated than Answers. Also, the discussion stream on popular groups might be filled with spammy discussions or links. To counter this, select “What’s Happening” instead of “Latest Discussions” as the preferred view.

Two interesting features of LinkedIn Groups that caught my attention are Top Influencers This Week and Statistics as shown above. Statistics will be able to help you identify Groups that are worth investing your efforts. Take some time to check out the activities of top influencers too because this will give you ideas on the types of discussion that attracts the participation of group members.

LinkedIn Groups is a great alternative for @LinkedIn Answers. – Click to Tweet!

Quora

Quora is a website that allows visitors to post questions and answers. Most of us would have considered it as a viable alternative for LinkedIn Answers. There are even rumors speculating that LinkedIn is actually preparing to acquire Quora and thus, closing down Answers.

As Quora is built primarily around questions and answers, it offers a number of robust features that LinkedIn Answers lack. First of all, the number of topics that users can follow or subscribe to is way higher. Also, Quora allows its users to edit questions and suggest edits to answers posted by others. This nifty feature resulted in higher quality user-generated discussions and content.

Kristi Hines, a brilliant blogger on social media and blogging, wrote a very useful guide on how to use Quora for marketing. In the guide, she explains what the platform is all about and how marketers can participate in the community.

Quora is a great alternative for @LinkedIn Answers. – Click to Tweet!

Google+ Communities

Not too long ago, Google+ introduced Google+ Communities, which is a feature similar to Groups on Facebook and LinkedIn.

The simpler and cleaner interface facilitates topical or interest-based discussions better better than other social networks. The Communities that I am currently part of have a steady flow of quality discussions but this may vary depending on the moderators.

The search capability in Google+ allows us to search for Communities relevant to us. Most active participants maintain a comprehensive Google+ profile. This lets you “prequalify” individuals before reaching out to them. The profile information and latest updates can also be used to provide a context for your personalized outreach message.

Google+ Communities is a great alternative for @LinkedIn Answers. – Click to Tweet!

Stack Exchange

Stack Exchange is a network of almost 100 question-and-answer sites that covers a wide range of topics. From a topic as remote as genealogy to a topic that appeals to a wider audience like movies and sports, there will be a Stack Exchange site that caters to it.

Participating on the sites earns reputation points and badges that will boost your credibility as a member. Sites that are on the Stack Exchange network host laser-targeted discussions and most of the members have a deep passion in the topic of the site that they are part of.

Keeping that in mind, specific, clear and well thought-out questions and answers will usually receive great and useful response from members.

Stack Exchange is a great alternative for @LinkedIn Answers. – Click to Tweet!

Yahoo Answers

Despite being slowly forgotten by Internet users, a quick check on Alexa shows that Yahoo, together with its wide range of web properties, rank Number 4 on the web in terms of traffic. Checking on the demographic info of Yahoo Answers on Quantcast also reveals that young adults and teenagers form the majority of visitors.

With the social media boom over the past few years, the attention on Yahoo Answers shifted to sexier services like Facebook, Twitter and more recently, Instagram. The number of active users on Yahoo Answers is still fairly high and without the competition from larger and resourceful brands, there is an interesting opportunity for small businesses or individuals who are willing to spend their time on the service.

On Yahoo Answers, the best answer gets chosen or voted to the top by the asker or other members. This is much simpler as compared to other question-and-answer services. This simplicity attracts a lot of active members who are deeply passionate about various non-tech topics and care very little about sexy features.

If your business is targeting non-savvy individuals or young adults, Yahoo Answers may be your best replacement for LinkedIn Answers.

Yahoo Answers is a great alternative for @LinkedIn Answers. – Click to Tweet!

Forums

Forums (also known as discussion or community boards) are not as sexy as any of the latest social media websites but they are alive and kicking! Across many topics, they are still the primary destination for individuals to post questions and seek answers. Many of them are pretty dominant on the search engines too, especially for local or long tail search terms.

Many popular social media platforms promote real name and identity. This is one of the main reasons why forums are still alive because anybody, using any username that need not be your real name, can register as a member.

Marketers and business owners can usually rely on search engines to discover forums that their target audience is a part of. Do not participate in forums solely for traffic or inbound links. With experience, most administrators and moderators of popular forums have seen enough spamming tricks and they will not hesitate to give you the ban.

Instead, set your aim to become an authority in the forums that you are part of by providing value in the form of help, advice or even useful content to the members. Reach out to forum leaders occasionally and be open about building long term relationships with them or other members. If you are new to the concept of forum marketing, have a look at my step-by-step guide to getting started with forum marketing.

Forums are great alternatives for @LinkedIn Answers. – Click to Tweet!

Golden Rules for Marketing on Q & A Websites

The alternatives above for LinkedIn Answers are going to be slightly different but as long as the following golden rules are kept in mind, you should still be able to achieve the marketing goals that you have set for Q & A sites.

• Understand the culture and read the community guidelines before participating.
• Identify influencers or power users.
• Participate by providing help, valuable answers, comments or responses.
• Be specific with your questions or answers.
• Follow up, network and build relationships.

What are some other alternatives for LinkedIn Answers that you discovered? Do you have any experience participating in any of the alternatives listed above? Share your experience in the comment section below.

Image courtesy of mariosundar and Gavin Tapp

As an entrepreneur or small business owner, what are the new features that are appealing? Is it worth the price? Should you be getting one?

In this special blog post, we will answer all the questions above and hopefully, you will be able to decide for yourself whether the iPad mini is going to be a good buy.

Easy to Carry Around

The 7.9-inch iPad mini will be so much easier to carry around because it is smaller, thinner and lighter. As you can see from the image above, you can hold it with just one hand. That’s how small it is.

Getting Mini Things Done

Despite the small size, the device has the same amount of resolution as its predecessor, the 9.7-inch iPad. It also comes with a dual-core Apple A5 processor. This means that you will get the same experience across all of the existing iPad apps.

For business owners and entrepreneurs, as the device is highly portable, you can basically get tasks like emails, web browsing, news reading and even minor document editing done wherever you are.

Great Reading Device

Reading books and constantly learning new knowledge is key for an entrepreneur and small business owner as it widens our perspective. The new iPad mini comes with iBooks. This app allows you to buy books via iBookstore and to do some reading while you are commuting to the office, before going to bed or while having your breakfast.

Useful features of iBooks include the ability to highlight and take notes, sharing a passage via email, Facebook or Twitter, multiple reading themes and VoiceOver, which is a feature that lets the iPad mini read your books to you.

High Speed LTE Connection

Fast Internet connection is becoming a need for many business owners as our reliance on the Internet grows by the day. Many mobile apps today require a fast data connection as well to serve the best experience. The iPad mini offers high speed LTE connection that is going to provide an optimal web browsing and app usage experience.

If you are constantly out of the office or working with a virtual team, a fast LTE connection will allow you to participate in business meetings and conference calls anytime and anywhere you want.

Optimized App Experience

Phil Schiller, Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing at Apple, did a comparison of apps running on the iPad mini and the Google Nexus 7 (a 7-inch tablet running on Android) during his keynote.

The results are clear. Most of the apps on the Android ecosystem are basically scaled up from the versions made for mobile phones. On the iOS app ecosystem, however, apps are optimized to deliver the best user experience on a tablet.

10 Hours of Battery Life

As entrepreneurs and business owners, we want a device with a battery life that is able to last throughout most of our working hours. It is a pain if a tablet is running low on battery when we need them the most.

Apple claimed that the iPad mini comes with a 10-hour battery life, which is good for many of us. Of course, this may differ according to our usage pattern.

The Cheapest iPad in the Market

What about the price? Although the price is slightly higher than many tablets with similar sizes such as the Google Nexus 7 and the others offered by lesser known brands, it is the cheapest tablet from Apple to date.

The price of the 16GB Wi-Fi model is $329. The price of the 32GB and 64GB variant is $429 and $529 respectively. The version that comes with LTE is priced at $459 for 16GB, $559 for 32GB and $659 for 64GB.

Android OS Alternatives for the iPad mini

If you are just not that into the iPad mini, here are some alternative tablets that are running the Android operating system from Google:

• Google Nexus 7
• Amazon Kindle Fire HD
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 2

Will You Buy an iPad mini?

What do you think about the brand new Apple iPad mini? Do you think that it will become an essential device if you go out and get one? How do you plan to use it as an entrepreneur or business owner?

Share with us what you think in the comment section below.

The following resources are worth your time and will help you in growing your business. Happy reading and enjoy your weekend!

Marketing

7 Blogs Designed for Conversion and What You Can Learn From Them: The blog is often the hub for content marketing campaigns. With resources slowly shifting to content marketing, it is crucial to make sure that your blog is capable of converting visitors and readers into subscribers, leads or even customers. In this compilation post, Kristi Hines is kind enough to point out the conversion goals, areas of conversion and why the designs work for these 7 blogs.

How to Find Influential People with Social Media: 13.4% of U.S. adults online create 80% of the content that influences people. And 6.2% of these web users are responsible for 80% of the influence in social media. This shows how important influencers can be when it comes to marketing. Russ Henneberry did a great job explaining where to find the first set of influencers and how to keep up with their latest updates.

7 Targeted Social Networks Niche Marketers Should Try: This list of lesser known but highly targeted social networks is compiled by Rachel Sprung. They are not as popular as Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest but if you are trying to find a community of men, senior citizens or mommy bloggers, then this list is going to be very useful for you.

8 Tips for Small Businesses Starting Out on Tumblr: Tumblr is commonly perceived as a content creation tool between a blog and Twitter. Currently, it is very popular among teens. If you are planning to engage the Tumblr community, this article by David Moth provides some useful tips and features that will help you to blend into the community easily and to get more exposure for your content.

10 Mission Critical Tools for Every Modern Marketer: As a marketer or an entrepreneur deeply involved in marketing, we always want better tools to help make our daily tasks simpler. Neil Patel compiled a list of useful tools to help achieve your marketing goals. Over at Sprout Geek, we are currently using IFTTT and Hootsuite at the moment and we are definitely going to incorporate the HelloBar in the near future.

Strategy

When Is It Time To Pivot? 8 Startups On How They Knew They Had To Change: As entrepreneurs, we all know we should push hard, persist and double down on the venture that we are working on. However, things don’t always go according to plan. When should we ask ourselves whether to continue pushing or to pivot to something new that has a better chance of becoming successful? This post, compiled by Scott Gerber, contains insights from 8 startups on when entrepreneurs should start considering whether to pivot or not.

10 Ways to Spend Your Funding: Confessions of an Ex-Lean Entrepreneur: We all know that you have to spend wisely when it comes to business. However, it can get confusing when every department starts to demand for more budget. How should you allocate your money, especially if you just got funded? This article by Shafqat Islam, the co-founder of NewsCred, lists 10 ways he spent the money that the startup raised from its A round.

Outsource for Productivity, Not Because of Laziness: Outsource is a word that will keep reappearing in your head after you are in business for a few months. Zachary Tong put up this interesting article on why you should outsource and the ultimate lesson is that you should not outsource because you are lazy. Certain things, even those that are boring, has to be done by yourself.

Human Resources

Employee #1 is the Toughest Hire: Do you have a number of employees working in your business? If yes, then do you agree with Elad Gill that the first employee is always the hardest to hire? This is a must read post especially for first time entrepreneurs looking to increase the headcount of their business. Elad does not only highlight the difficulties that you will face but also suggests ways to mitigate the problems.

Case Studies

How I’m Making Five-Figures A Month Off Bootstrapped Products: Despite all the investing activities that you read about on sites like Techcrunch, getting funded by an investor is still rare for most of the startups and small businesses out there. Over the past week, I’ve discovered this case study article by Brennan Dunn, on how his decision to venture into the info product scene has helped him to bring in money and customers for his startup, Planscope.

This Week on Sprout Geek

The Ultimate Guide to Linkedin Answers: Linkedin Answers is frequently suggested to businesses or individuals looking to target B2B leads or sales. This guide introduces the basic and advanced features of the Q & A platform, and how you can use it to generate site traffic, leads, sales or even build new relationships with industry influencers.

How Are You, Sprout Geeks?

What is the most important thing that you have learned this week about running your business? Do you have a link or article to share with us? Feel free to post it in the comments section below.

Image courtesy of Ha-Wee and mikebaird

Linkedin Answers is a feature frequently cited by social media marketing experts and marketers as a source for B2B businesses to generate traffic, leads and sales.

However, the layout of Linkedin Answers can be very overwhelming for first timers. Where should you start? Where will the traffic, leads and sales come from? How to use Linkedin Answers for marketing?

Let’s not panic and start with why it has the potential to become your top channel for sales, leads and even traffic.

Why Linkedin Answers?

Linkedin Answers is basically a Question and Answer (Q & A) section of Linkedin and it is thriving thanks to the consistent flow of questions and quality answers from users.

The following are two major ways you can use it for marketing:

• Identify Influencers: Many influencers with strong domain expertise are here to build their authority and credibility by answering questions that others have. These influencers may have a large following that your business is interested to reach out to.
• Build Authority: Your prospects might be looking for answers or solutions here and by providing them with useful answers, you get to establish yourself as an authority and they will be more willing to read what you have to offer or to connect with you professionally.

Linkedin Answers can be used to identify influencers and build authority. – Click to Tweet!

Sounds pretty easy, right? Now, let’s make sure your time and efforts are well spent.

Finding Questions to Answer

Tons of questions are posted onto Linkedin everyday. Let me share some tips that you can use to find questions that fit right into your area of expertise and how to make your answer stand out from the rest.

Subscribe to Categories

Questions are nicely sorted into categories. To stay updated on new questions that are added, you can browse to each of the categories and subscribe to them via RSS feed. Only subscribe to categories that are relevant to your business or expertise because you don’t want to be overwhelmed by a huge number of unread feed items.

Quick Tip: Recommended Categories

Even the list of categories looks overwhelming to you? Well, there is a section on the main page of Answers that recommend a list of categories based on your past answers and expertise. Problem solved!

Reaching Out to Questions Beyond Your Network

By default, Linkedin presents a list of questions posted by people that are the closest to you or your connections. In order to reach out to people that are beyond your network, you can click on “more open questions >>” and select “Date” instead of “Degrees away from you”.

Advanced Search

Most of the questions posted on Linkedin will get at least 5 to 10 answers in the first 3 hours and if you want to add your answer to the list, it will appear last unless it is lucky enough to be chosen as the best answer.

Many users often missed out Advanced Answers Search. As you can see in the screenshot below, it gives you an option to return unanswered questions only.

If you decide to answer these questions, your answer will appear right below the question itself and ahead of all the answers that are going to be posted by others.

Selecting a Question to Answer

First things first, short one line answers providing an absolute solution will not work on Linkedin so you must be an expert on the subject matter relating to a question that you are going to answer.

Secondly, avoid answering general questions. The answer for questions like “What is SEO?” or “How to start an online business?” can be easily found online and here are three reasons why answering these questions is counterproductive:

• The time needed to come up with a good answer for these questions can be better spent on creating pillar blog posts or content that promises better return on investment.
• The person asking these questions often do not have a strong intent to solve their problems. If the intent was strong enough, they would have Googled for the solutions instead of posting a general question on Linkedin Answers.
• Questions like these attract a lot of crappy answers that will bury the one submitted by you. Position yourself to be an expert that provides unique insights and customized solutions that stand out among the rest.

How to Answer Questions?

• Before you start typing, plan your answer.
• Saying hi is fine but don’t let your introduction go beyond one line. Dive straight to the point.
• Always elaborate on your points and provide a personal example or case study if applicable.
• If a question is about comparing two options available, make sure your answer covers the pros and cons of both the options.
• Context is key. You might have the best answer based on your experience and expertise but good answers take into account the context of the person asking the question. Read Why Context is So Important? by Joel Gascoigne.

Context is key to answer questions on Linkedin Answers. – Click to Tweet!

Write a Note to the Person Asking the Question

When we are answering a question, we tend to ignore the note section because it is only optional.

However, this is actually a very useful feature to reach out to the person asking the question with a personalized note or response. Here are some ideas for things that you can include in the note:

• Do you have a blog post that offers a more detailed explanation to the question?
• Do you offer something that will help solve the problem?
• Do you need to ask questions that are more specific so that a better answer can be provided?
• Can you offer an hour or more of your time to give a more personalized advice?

This is arguably the most underutilized way to generate interests, leads and even sales on Linkedin Answers.

Following up is the most underutilized tactic on Linkedin Answers. – Click to Tweet!

Suggest an Expert

If you don’t have the expertise to answer a question but you do know somebody within your network that is capable of doing that, why not suggest him or her as an expert to answer the question? By doing so, you can strengthen your professional relationship with the person because in a way, you are acknowledging his or her expertise on the subject matter.

Always Try to Follow Up

This is another way to stand out from the rest. You cannot really send a message to a person with a free Linkedin account unless both of you are connected.

However, if you have answered a question, you can invite the person who asked the question to connect with you. In your invitation, you can ask whether the problem has been solved or whether your answer is useful for him or her.

Many Linkedin users don’t do this so if you start following up, the chances of you establishing a new connection and making a positive impression is way higher than the rest.

How to Ask Questions?

Moving on to the other side of the spectrum, asking questions on Linkedin Answers is a good way to discover experts that are relevant for your business.

Keep the following tips in mind when asking questions:

• Ask clear and specific questions. Search for solutions online before asking a question. Giving people a brief idea on the context (the industry that you’re in, the size of your business and if any, actions that you have taken) will help.
• Avoid posting URLs in your question. A question with a link is normally seen as an attempt to spam so avoid it.
• Clarify when necessary. Linkedin members might take your question the wrong way. If the first couple of answers are not what you are expecting, it is important to add a clarification as soon as possible.

Invite Connections to Answer

Similar to the Suggest an Expert feature mentioned above, you can invite up to 200 of your Linkedin connections to answer the questions that you have posted. Customize the personal note and if possible, acknowledge the expertise of your connections by telling them why they are chosen to answer the question. This will help to increase the response rate.

How Are You Using Linkedin Answers?

I will continue to update this post with tips and tricks that I discover.

Are you actively participating in Linkedin Answers? Are you using tricks that are not mentioned in the post? Feel free to suggest them in the comments section below and I will be glad to add them in.

Image courtesy of nan palmero

The following resources are worth your time and will help you in growing your business. Happy reading and enjoy your weekend!

Marketing

10 Creative Ways to Use Instagram for Business: Instagram has become a powerful mobile photo sharing platform over the past few months. Small businesses should start figuring out ways to gain some visibility on this platform. If you are totally clueless about Instagram marketing, Vanessa Au actually has some great suggestions on how you can get started. In her article, she also highlighted some examples of how businesses are using this trending platform.

10 B2B Companies that Create Exceptional Content: B2B marketers of boring and dull businesses such as manufacturing and heavy duty engineering often ditch the idea of content marketing because coming up with interesting content can be hard. If you look at this from a different perspective, however, this is actually a great opportunity if you are able to crack this tough nut that your competitors are not even trying to crack! This article by Meghan Keaney Anderson will provide you with some ideas for B2B content marketing.

How to Effectively Create a Google+ Following of 10,000 Engaged Fans: Google+ is often left out by social media marketers because it is constantly being referred to as a ghost town. Is it really? In this article, Eric Siu will change your perspective about Google+ as a platform to build an engaged audience. Try the tactics that Eric shared and Google+ might turn out to be the best social networking platform for your business.

The 10 Secrets That Make Networking Easy, Fun and Ridiculously Effective: If you are like me, then you are always the awkward guy standing at the corner during a networking event or a meetup, pretending to be busy by constantly checking on your phone. Well, it’s time for a change and this article by Neil Patel is packed with tips that you can use right away.

Sales

9 Steps to Close Your Startup Sales Deal: Landing a big account is always the dream of many startups. However, this is not easy. Matthew Bellows is kind enough to share his tips on how to sell successfully to big companies with the little resources that you have. Personally, I think tip #5 is a gem that many entrepreneurs miss out when they try to get the attention of big companies or corporations.

Human Resources

7 Ways Millennials are Changing the Workplace: Your business might not be ready for them but they are poised to make up a significant chunk of the workforce by 2014. How are millennials different from your current employees? How can you bring the best out of them? How can you create a workplace that is suitable for them? Well, Josh Tolan did a good job of explaining all these in this article.

14 Tips to Help Startups Keep High Potential Talent Growing and Happy: Tons of perks, above market rate remuneration and the long negotiation hours are some of the efforts you put in to persuade a bright talent to join your small business. What should you do to keep him motivated and happy? Dangling more perks in front of him? Well, according to this article compiled by the Young Entrepreneur Council, not necessarily.

Productivity

7 Deadly Sins of Business Meetings: Business meetings are very common nowadays. Yes, it is true that meetings can be used to set action plans and help move the business forward. However, if set up wrongly, meetings can be counterproductive and even useless. Are you setting up meetings for the sake of having it? Are you committing these sins of business meetings outlined by Lisa Girard?

Legal

14 Legal Tips for Starting Up: Legal procedures and issues are often the last things that come to the mind of an entrepreneur. Ignorance, time restrictions, the lack of understanding and experience are the main reasons for this. The Young Entrepreneur Council is kind enough to compile a list of legal tips that every entrepreneur should pay attention to when starting up. Do take time to fill in the legal gaps that you might have missed after reading this article.

How Are You, Sprout Geeks?

What is the most important thing that you have learned this week about running your business? Do you have a link or article to share with us? Feel free to post it in the comments section below.

Image courtesy of adkorte and Voka – Kamer van Koophandel Limburg

Most businesses starts off in someone’s basement or home office. If you are still in that stage or even if you’ve been in business for more than ten years, there is one tool that you should seriously consider getting. As soon as your tax ID number is established and your bank account is set up, you can apply for a small business credit card. Before you balk at the idea, hear me out. There are actually 5 very important reasons why your small business may need one.

Establish Credit for Your Business

Similar to the reasons why you would get a personal credit card, a business credit card will help you establish credit for your business. After contacting a few large banks, I discovered many of them use your strong personal FICO score to approve you for a business credit card but the card does not in fact report to your personal credit bureau. Instead, just like that first credit card you got on your 18th birthday, it starts building credit for your business.

Why is this important? As your business grows, you may find a need for equipment, vehicles, or even an office space. Unless you plan on having the funds in cash, you’ll want to be able to finance these things at a low interest rate. The better your business credit, the lower your rate will be and the more likely your application will be approved.

Separating Personal and Business Expenses

Most of us enjoy the convenience of paying online, in person, or over the phone using a credit card these days. As a small business owner, having a business credit card allows you to enjoy this convenience without charging your personal card.

Also, by separating your expenses, you get to save some time during the tax season because less confusion will happen when it comes to the preparation of tax returns and the filing of income taxes.

Get Rewarded on Your Expenses

Since you are in business to make money, shouldn’t you be making money on what you do every day? Two large, national banks, Bank of America and U.S. Bank, both offer business credit cards with up to 3% in cash back rewards. This means for every dollar you spend on your card, you earn free cash back.

Ideally, you make purchases on the credit card that you can afford to pay off at month end. By paying the statement balance in full, you avoid paying interest. This system means you are literally bringing in free money.

Don’t Take the Risk of Losing Your Cash or Checks

Making your normal purchases on a credit card protects your business. If you make a purchase online, the card is protected through Visa or MasterCard’s fraud division. If you lose cash or checks, you are putting your business finances at risk but with a credit card, if lost or compromised, a 90 second phone call can save everything you’ve worked hard to earn.

Track Your Business Expenses Without Fuss

If you are doing your own accounting, using a business credit card will save you some time as you don’t have to track your expenses vigorously. At month end, almost every bank will provide a statement, in digital or in paper, containing all the transactions incurred with the card. All you need to do by then is to input the transactions accordingly into your accounting system rather than inputting one receipt at a time.

What are Your Thoughts About Business Credit Cards?

As a business owner, you must research the best options for your company. There are a wide variety of credit products available out there. It is your responsibility to go after the ones that will continue to lead you towards success.

Which business credit card do you think is the most suitable for small business owners? What are some of the tips you have when it comes to using credit cards for business? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below.

Image courtesy of Andres Rueda and JD Hancock

Most of the fans are happy. And that can be seen from the number of likes and the positiveness in the comments.

Why does the Happiness Level of My Facebook Page Matters?

Hop over to any Facebook Page that has a high level of interaction. Read the posts and comments posted by fans. Don’t you think most of them are positive and happy?

Neil Patel, founder of KISSmetrics, writes in Little Tricks to Get More Customers Smiling that it makes logical sense that smiling customers make for successful businesses.

Simply put, happy Facebook fans are inclined towards liking your posts, publish positive comments themselves and share the content on your page. In fact, the chances of a happy fan converting into a lead or sale is higher too!

Happy Facebook fans are more likely to like, post positive comments and share what is on your page. – Click to Tweet!

Why Do We Need Positive Fan Comments and Posts?

Many surveys, including this one, found that customers are more likely to tell others about their bad experience with a business. Today, consumers can initiate such negative conversations easily using social networking platforms and the effect can be devastating for businesses as customers are more likely to publish something negative about your business than something positive.

We have also seen instances whereby the number of likes on a page shoots up simply because people were liking the page only to voice their disgruntlement or to publish negative comments.

Some may argue that this might be caused by a poor product or service and by fixing the quality of product or service in question, the negative comments and posts will go away. This is true but one should not forget that a happy fan base will give businesses a precious luxury, which is a time buffer to investigate complaints and to rectify the issue before things become ugly and hard to fix.

Thus, happy fans and highly positive posts are crucial in drowning out the negatives and improving the overall sentiment towards a business.

Wondering what you can do to make your fans happy? Let’s start off with the first – reward positive actions!

Reward Positive Actions

The common way that many businesses use is to reward fans with vouchers or small gifts for sharing their great experience with your product or how the services that you offered helped them.

If that is not possible due to budget or margin constraints, a simple gesture of thanking your active fans for their help in sharing something useful or helping to answer questions posted by other fans will promote more of such actions. An example of this is shown in the screenshot below taken from Social Media Examiner’s Facebook Page.

Another way to reward your fan for participating positively is to feature them on your page as seen from the screenshot below taken from The Hunger Games’ Facebook Page. Having their names or photos seen and recognized by the rest of the community is a huge incentive for your fans due to the need for respect and status. This will greatly induce others to do the same in order to get recognition among community members.

Smiles Are Contagious

One of the key points mentioned in 15 Fascinating Facts About Smiling is that a smile is contagious. People tend to smile and feel happy when they see others who are smiling. Best of all, people like it when they themselves are smiling! In the world of social networking, this psychological phenomenon can be evidenced across many popular Facebook Pages. A photo featuring a smiling customer or employee tend to get a lot of likes and the comments on these photos are often highly positive.

If you visit the Facebook Page of Mari Smith, the well known Facebook marketing expert, you will notice that there is always a bright and happy smile across her face in every photo that she is in. Her fans simply love it! From cover photos and profile pictures to thumbnails and promotional banners, there’s nothing that go onto the page without getting a ton of likes and comments.

Not convinced? Well, even a smile from a dog posted on Hubba Bubba’s Facebook Page managed to rake a ton of likes, comments and shares. What do you have to say now?

Sense of Humor

Having a sense of humor in your posts and interactions with fans helps to humanize your Facebook Page. Most Facebook Pages are boring. Sprinkling some witty lines and funny images across a few of your posts will immediately grab the attention of your fans. Almost every Facebook user is surfing the site in a casual manner, seeking for fun and entertaining content. This behavior caused the inclination of sharing amusing images or status updates.

And yes, a little sense of humor makes your fans smile too!

Engage with Fans

Connecting and interacting with fans on a personal level give the fans, who are taking extra efforts in commenting, the feeling of importance. And of course, when they realized that the ongoing interaction on your Facebook Page is actually happening in a two-way manner, they will come back for more. Ask yourself. Do you prefer talking to somebody that will give you a response or somebody that does not even bother what you are talking about?

Brainstorm for updates, comments and responses that will help to understand your fans more. Ask questions that force your fans to take sides and debate. Create a simple poll. Dive into the stream of responses and start pushing for more by asking for further elaborations or questions. Have fun and mingle around with your fans.

Be Personable in Your Responses

Avoid canned comments or responses because these fail to show the sincerity of your business and most of the time, your fans will be able to spot this quickly. Be personable and if you know a customer or client well enough, don’t be afraid to show it in your reply. Often times, by visiting a fan’s personal Facebook profile will reveal some recent happenings that will probably help you in crafting a personable response.

When these efforts are made in coming up with a response that your fans can relate to, you are actually humanizing your page and the fans will appreciate it since they know that they are actually interacting with a real person.

Choose Your Colors

Colors are elements that influence the mood level of your fans. Referring to the Psychological Properties of Colors, you may want to consider publishing images that contain mainly of bright colors such as red, yellow and orange in order to raise the happiness level of your Facebook Page.

Want some examples of Facebook Pages that are using brightly-colored images that do not only capture the attention of fans but also entice them to like and comment on the images? Check out the Skittles and Nutella‘s Facebook Page.

Always Be Testing and Repeat the Good Stuffs

In order to determine and understand which type of posts generate the most likes, comments and shares, you need to constantly track the performance of your posts using Facebook Insights. Identify which of them are performing well so that by increasing the amount of similar posts, the engagement level and positiveness of your page will increase.

How Can We Measure Happiness?

To be honest it’s hard to measure the level of happiness using numbers. Facebook stats (likes, comments and shares) are simple data points that you can use. In fact, happiness is something that you can sort of gauge for yourself when you visit a page. How positive or negative are the comments and updates from fans?

You can of course use sentiment analysis tools such as Trackur or Social Mention but they do not specifically measure the overall sentiment of your Facebook Page. Do ping us in the comment section below if you know a tool that does that.

Share Your Facebook Page URL!

Do you maintain a Facebook Page for your business or venture? If yes, how do you keep the fans happy? Share the URL of your Facebook Page in the comment section below together with a tip on how to keep Facebook fans happy!

Image courtesy of channelship