"Network Solutions - Small business conversations and working together for small business success" - 4 new articles
Grow Smart Business Webinar Interview with Tom Heath of The Washington Post
1. What do you think is the most challenging aspect of raising capital for a small business? READ the rest of the interview at Grow Smart Business… IN THE MEAN TIME…. Register for the GrowSmartBusiness Webinar at www.growsmartbusiness.com/webinar. Find out YOUR marketing and finance score by taking the survey – your results will be benchmarked against the Small Business Success Index. Grow Smart Business Webinar Interview with Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends
It depends on the age of your business. (1) STARTUPS — If you are a startup, uncertainty about the future is your biggest financing challenge. Your business is unproven and you don't have a track record yet. Emotionally it may feel much riskier as a startup entrepreneur to seek funding, because you don't know what the future holds. How do you predict sales? How fast will your business be able to grow? Are your expense predictions realistic? You know what they say about a startup seeking money: divide your sales projections by half and double your expense projections. It always takes longer and costs more to get a new business off the ground. And I've found that to be true when I started my own business and in many startups I see. The problem is that because the future is uncertain, too many startups underestimate their capital needs. Then they give up just before the dawn, because it looks darkest then. And that's a shame. Startups need to get creative about alternative financing sources. Common sources of funding for a startup: READ the rest of the interview at Grow Smart Business… IN THE MEAN TIME…. Register for the GrowSmartBusiness Webinar at www.growsmartbusiness.com/webinar. Find out YOUR marketing and finance score by taking the survey – your results will be benchmarked against the Small Business Success Index. Can Communities of First-Run Fans Save Appointment Television?[This one started as a "strictly-speaking, not about social media" entry, but I think I figured out a way to tie it back.] Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about television. Nothing, I’m sure, that hasn’t already been done to death (say, by the TV/pop culture eggheads up at Syracuse), but outside of rare occasions, I just don’t feel the same kind of urgency about appointment television — at least, not for its own sake. Appointment television has been under attack for a while. Outside of the competing demands of other media (like, the Internet), we have a whole host of time- and place-shifting tools these days. Timeshifting is nothing new — we’ve had VCRs for 30 years — but DVRs have just made things so effortless. On top of that, throw in, Hulu, iTunes, BitTorrent, the near-instant availabilty of entire seasons on DVD, or whatever other TV on-demand technology you employ, and appointment television just seems so… obsolete. Quaint, even. When you can watch what you want, when you want, on your own schedule, I think the remaining benefits of sticking with appointment television are: * You can participate in your normal conversations and social networks without having to worry about dodging spoilers. If you’re a DVR person, the spoiler danger zone might only be a few hours or days, but if you’re a “wait for the DVD” person, that could be months of wearing blinders. * Outside of whatever intangible psychic benefit you gain from being “first on your block” to see something, you can also be part of that community of first conversations — up to and including realtime conversations. If you aren’t keeping your television appointments, you miss out on the chance to be in that group. For example, I’m a few weeks behind on 24, which means I can’t participate in the We Love DC blog’s live coverage of 24 (they do a particular focus on nitpicking all the errors in DC geography and obvious LA filming locations). Something similar happened on Battlestar Galactica nights — being Friday nights, I’d tape it more often than not, but by doing so, I missed out on forum chats, where you’re part of a community reacting to the same things at the same time. (Where you can see everyone saying “Oh, snap!” at the same time. You can go through afterwards, but it’s reading a transcript — you miss out on the contemporaneousness of it.) Anyway, it kind of goes to the question of what people will pay for or shift their schedules around for — early access, and the built-in community of first-run fans. But how do you get people to watch a show, let alone pay for one, sight unseen? That’s kind of what we’re seeing on HBO / Showtime series — subscribers get it first; if the buzz builds, it migrates to non-premium channels and then to DVD. For example, I don’t do premium channels, but based on community interactions and recommendations, I’ll probably buy Generation Kill on DVD this week (it’s on sale). Maybe there’s a hybrid pricing model — premium for first access, leveraging that community of ardent (that is, deranged) fans, followed by a robust window for free broadcasts and limited archives to build mass, then another premiums for fully on-demand archives or whole seasons. Anyway, is being a part of a first-run community or not having to worry about spoilers in your Twitterstream enough to make you keep your television appointments — or even pay to be first? Can online community save appointment television? Leave a comment and share your thoughts. Turning to the Internet for success during a recession - Part 3 - Online AdvertisingAs with all typical marketing programs, companies feel that they must advertise in every medium in order to get the word out about their product. With the Internet, this is all done through online advertising. What exactly is online advertising? Well you have your typical Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and banner advertising, and there are some other forms as well, including email marketing at times. However, for the purposes of this post, we’ll focus on SEO and SEM. On Online Advertising. In an eMarketer.com study conducted during 2008, $13.5 billion was spent on online advertising with a bulk of it spent on search engine marketing. Just how much? Well based on the research, 88% of money spent went to paid search and 11% went towards organic search (SEO). Should these things change in the future, especially during a recession? With budgets being tightened and everyone trying to save some money, I would imagine that while search marketing efforts are going to increase, the focus shouldn’t be on throwing out paid search ads, but on your content and truly understanding how your site is being noticed by search engines. As part of an integrated campaign, search marketing should play a crucial role, especially now during the recession. With more people getting online and using search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live Search, having your site appear near the top of the page when certain keyword phrases are typed can generate tremendous traffic to your website and can often lead to conversions/purchases. So what steps can you take in order to make the most out of this? One of the first things that you should probably do to help avoid firing blindly into the Internet world is to have someone come in and conduct a search engine audit on your website. Based on my past experiences in working with a consultant, they review your site and let you know what’s good and what’s bad about it - from a search engine perspective. Then they go about and take a look at what keywords will work for your site and the competitiveness of each of them. They will generate statistics, trends, reports, etc. that will help you moving forward. There are a few companies that would conduct this audit for you so look them up. The beauty is that these keywords can be used both for SEO and SEM placements. But let’s look at search engine optimization for a second. This is probably the first place you should look when trying to promote your site versus jumping over to search engine marketing and essentially “spraying and praying” that your text ads will strike a chord with someone and have them click on your site. It is a debateable topic whether paid search garners more traffic/conversion than organic search, but it would make sense to make sure that your “house is in order” before promoting it. By this I mean make sure that your content is exactly the way you want it? Is it specific enough that if someone types in a certain keyword, that the page will have enough information for them or will it result in them clicking further which is a bad thing? Does your site adhere to search engine optimization best practices? The more care you put into your content and your website design/development overall, the better your search results will be. However, search engine advertising/marketing should not be overlooked. In fact, the technology behind it has grown over the past few years and there are ways to make sure that you are getting your money’s worth. Perhaps the greatest asset to SEM is the geo-targeting approach. If you are only wishing to reach folks in the west coast of the United States, then you can have your text ads show up for those people with IP addresses located in one of the several states in that region. This will help avoid your text ads showing up for people who might convert but you weren’t targeting - thus avoiding wasting money. Something else to think about when you’re managing your campaign is the time and effort (and possibly cost) associated with managing this SEM campaign. Unfortunately you can’t simply choose a keyword, insert your ad and let it run for the duration. Why? Because the keywords are done through an auction-like process. The higher you are willing to bid on a moment’s notice, the greater your frequency of being seen (impressions). It’s always a state of constant monitoring, but you don’t want to break the bank to be seen all the time. That would cost thousands of dollars (depending on the keyword). One option is to check out a web marketing management solution that may wind up saving you some money overall - like Yield Software. These companies will help you monitor your campaigns and allow you to manage it on your own. So they give you the tools, you shape its path. It should be important to note that when you’re looking at the keywords and the bidding price, if you have enough content on your site relating to that keyword, you should focus on doing organic search or SEO. The less competitive the word or phrase you’re targeting, the more you should go with SEM. I once heard an analogy “SEM is like renting your home while SEO is owning your home”. This definitely holds true. With a strong SEO strategy, your website/landing page can be the leading “authority” on certain keywords but if you’re only focusing on a temporary campaign or not sure about the effectiveness on a specific page, then you might want to also consider SEM. However, do NOT think that these are mutually exclusive. These should be woven together to help form a cohesive strategy in driving traffic to your site and when done correctly, can help bring you success during these times. More Recent Articles |
Thomas Heath covers small businesses for 
Anita Campbell, Editor of 
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