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August 17, 2006
Effective Small business Marketing Using Podcast And Blogs
If you run a small business especially in the IT sector recent survey by Marketing Sherpa is positive news.
The survey confirmed that podcasts and blogs are among the most effective marketing tools for generating technology related sales lead.
If your small business provides IT related products then you too should be adding podcasting and blogging to your marketing mix as the findings confirmed that 35% of software and ASP marketers rated their company blog as very effective, as well as 33 per cent of technology services companies.
The top five tools for generating sales leads are:
1. Free Trials - 54% calling trials very effective.
2. Webcast - 41% favorite for software marketers
3. White paper - 31% to 36% effectiveness
4. Blog - 35% of software and ASP marketers rated their blog as very effective
5. Podcast - 22% of software marketers say podcast is very effective
Although the survey by Marketing Sherpa relates to companies in the IT sector there's ample evidence that small companies can also take advantage of Bolgs and podcasts to generate sales leads. These are proven lead generation tools you should be using in marketing your small business.
Posted by David at 12:27 PM
August 9, 2006
Small Business Ideas For Cash
Most budding entrepreneurs who want to start their own business find it hard if not impossible to get a government grant (United Kingdom) or (Small business loan (USA), however, if you live in Moscow chances are you'll be paid for your small business ideas.
Apparently Moscow's ageing small business entrepreneurs is a concern to City Hall and to address the problem they have approved a program to give 20,000 young entrepreneurs the opportunity to start their own businesses. This will be supported by sponsorship events.
Moscow's City Hall has set aside $4.7 million over three years to fund the small business ideas initiative.
If your have a business idea and you happen to live in Moscow consider yourself lucky to be in a position to be paid to start your own business – this opportunity is rare in the UK and USA.
See this small business idea article for more information.
Posted by David at 9:35 AM
August 8, 2006
Why is BT focusing on Small Business IT?
Recent acquisition of Dabs.com by BT has prompted the question, why is British Telecom (BT) suddenly focusing on small businesses - away from telecom towards IT?
Perhaps the reason has to do with the fact that there are about 1.5 million small to medium size businesses (SMEs) in the UK – that offers BT revenue potential through the traditionally close relationship that SMEs have with local suppliers.
Analysts at BT would say small business are incredibly diverse and their requirements vary and as such there is huge potential to offer their products and service to small businesses - whether it's through web site development, running websites, cutting call costs with Voice over IP phone services, or using the latest in laptops, PDAs and wireless access to run their businesses on the move.
BT is not the only conglomerate that's focusing their efforts on small businesses; Microsoft currently launched it small business servers and it already provide financial accounting software including other products and services.
BT’s acquisition of Dabs.com is recognition of the fact that smaller businesses often prefer dealing with local suppliers, so there’s now BT Local Businesses all around the UK that can attend to customer's needs on a one to one basis.
With competition from VOIP (voice Over Internet Protocol) that offers lower if not free telephone costs, BT needs to recognize the new competitive environment and like other large telecoms and IT companies they cannot ignore the purchasing power and shopping habits of small businesses.
David
Small Business Resource
Posted by David at 5:14 PM
August 6, 2006
Rare Search Engine Optimisation Videos By Google
These are rare videos straight from Google. Nothing very new because most of this search engine optimisation
stuff is already on Google's web site. But this is the live human touch. The "Master" speaks:
Video 1: Qualities of a good web site
Google's Search Engine Optimisation Video.
Video 2: Questions and answers on some SEO Myths.
Google's SEO
Video 3: Should you Optimize your web site for Search Engines or for visitors?
Google's video on Optimising Your Web Site
Video 4: - Questions on static vs. dynamic links does PageRank flow the same to both?
Pitfalls to avoid with dynamic links?
Can Sitemaps alert site owners when their site has been hacked?
Can you do geotargeting within Google’s Quality Guidelines?
Google's video on Page Rank, Sitemaps etc
Video 5: Merging domains with 301 directs?
How to create a site architecture with themes and keywords?
URLs with too many parameters – can you serve up static HTML to Googlebot instead?
How to do split A/B testing?
Google's Video on 301 directs, themes, keywords and split testing
Video 6: - 1. Should I worry about results estimates for supplemental results?
2. using the site operator?
3. with negated terms?
4. special syntax such as intitle?
Why do 301 directs take so long to be reflected in supplemental results?
Video 7: Does Google Analytics play a part in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS)?
When does Google detect duplicate content?
You want to mark my page as porn in SafeSearch–what do you recommend?
Is it okay to make hyperlinks in option elements?
Video on SERPS, Duplicate Content, hyperlinks
Video 8: What’s the difference between an index update, an algorithm update, and a data refresh?
video on various Google updates
Video 9: All about datacenters (including werewolves vs. unicorns!)
Question about google datacenters?
Should all datacenters on the same Class C block be roughly the same?
Video on more SEO technical issues
Video 10: Lightning Round!
Is it possible to search just for home pages?
Can you use strong and em instead of bold (b) and italics (i)
Will we ever see kitty posts again?
What are Google SSD, Google RS2, and all those other things Tony Ruscoe found?
Does Google rank blog sites any differently than regular websites?
Does Google treat .gov.pl links with the same weight as regular .gov links?
Sorry! you'll have to wait for this video.
There you have it! Are you the wiser? What's the number one thing you've learnt?
It should be that in building your web site give Google what they want.
"Keep It Natural"
Posted by David at 5:05 PM
