p2w2 blog

How To Find Content For Small Business Blogs

Shruti — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:54:52 +0000

“You are what you publish.” is the new age mantra for all small business owners. Blogging is like golfing on the net. Not only do you get to network with prospective clients who are looking for services you offer, it is an important search engine marketing tool as well. Search engines index, categorise and rank a well documented blog. But the question “How to Find Content for your Business Blogs?” remains. Cynthia Trevino has outlined some ideas here that could be considered.

# 1. Look for what the competition is writing about.

# 2. Pick up topics from networking sites.

# 3. Ask your customers about their problems and offer solutions.

# 4. Ask your sales team about frequently asked questions.

# 5. Share your passions and once in a while, blog about your personal matters.

“Good quality content is just another basic business requirement these days. It’s not a nice-to-have. Especially for small businesses without large marketing budgets. Writing compelling, interesting, helpful content and posting it online can help you to be more “findable” when buyers are searching for solutions.”

For further insight into blogging, you can also read this.

Five Tips for Creating Website for Business

Shruti — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:37:07 +0000

Your website gives the first impression about your business. It is a reflection upon your company’s personality. While, simplicity is the key, it is difficult to strike a balance between looks and purpose while designing a website. This blog post in Small biz bee offers five tips that can help you create a website that brings business.

“If you leave your website’s look and feel strictly to the designers, be prepared to get a beautiful, sexy, artistic site that does everything but make you money.”

Four Ways of Implementing Internet Marketing

Shruti — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:16:39 +0000

No matter which business you own, Internet Marketing is here to stay. But how do you implement it? Russ Henneberry has outlined four options you can consider.

It is true that you can learn all the techniques required to top the search results. However, back linking to get optimized results for your website is a time-consuming process and time, as we know, is something all small business owners are short of. So, managing the entire online marketing process on you own is not very advisable for small business owners. Hiring an in-house search engine optimization specialist is an option. However, this involves a lot of costs and is economical only if you have enough volume to cover the costs incurred. I recommend all small businesses to outsource, specifically to low cost countries, not because we are an outsourcing company, but because I genuinely believe that outsourcing gives the best possible output with the minimum cost of time and resources. In Russ Henneberry’s words,

Outsourcing is a wonderful thing for small business. It allows us to have the best of both worlds - we don’t have to do it ourselves and we don’t have to pay the expense of having a full time employee. If you do your homework on your online marketer and have some good discussions about risk tolerance and expectations you are on your way to online marketing success.

The four options as outlined by him:

1. Learn how to do it yourself

If your website is going to drive business to you it is going to cost you one of two things: time or money. There are no “magic bullets” that will bring business to your website for a small amount of money and little investment of time on your part.

2. Hire someone in-house

If the prospective employee is only showing theoretical understanding of online marketing but you feel they have the potential to learn and the technical background to execute, you can hire this employee for a lower salary and get them some training.If the prospective employee is able to show you actual work they have accomplished and provide you with some idea of the results, you will surely be looking at a higher salary or hourly wage for that hire.

If you plan to let them learn through “trial by error” you could do irreversible damage to your website and your online reputation and waste a tremendous amount of time and money.

3. Outsource it

4. Don’t do it at all

If your business is not at the very end of its life, you should absolutely be putting Choice #4 out of your mind as a possible alternative. The web will continue to grow as the marketing medium of choice for small and large businesses alike.

It’s worth a read!

Are we on the same page?

Shruti — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:35:18 +0000

How to Build Your Business Credit Rating

Chaitanya — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:51:29 +0000

Management of finance in recession period is challenging. The credit worthiness of your business plays a major role in your business cash flows. Fastupfront blog has written a good article (How to Build Your Business Credit Rating) on how to improve your business credit rating for borrowing required finance.

Tip #1: Separate your business credit profile from your personal credit.
Tip #2: Register your business with the major credit reporting agencies and monitor reporting.
Tip #3: Make good cash flow management a priority.
Tip #4: Seek out transactions that will improve your credit score.