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Online Video for Small Businesses - Can I afford it?
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
It all started with Youtube and Viral marketing. It spread to personal multimedia on websites. It continued with Rovion… For $3,000 you could have a professional nudge on your site bugging all your repeat visitors (but it looks cool). Microsoft’s bought it, and servicemagic has as well. The problem is that it’s really expensive. But, we’re nice people, and we want small business owners to benefit as well.
Want to put video on your site? Here’s a couple of resources:
USA Today’s Steve Strauss Encourages Small Business Owners to have Blogs
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008John Janstch alerted me to an article in the USA Today online that adresses whether business owners should have blogs.
Steve Strauss gives 5 reasons a small business owner should have a blog:
- You help build a sense of community - in other words, you build a relationship with the customer, so they see you as a real person… not just a webpage
- They allow you to plug products
- They help with SEO - I use the blog here solely for SEO (as well as to get new clients - I’ll get to the plug at the end
)
17 Useful Wordpress SEO and other plugins
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008- All in One SEO Pack - This is an absolutely vital plugin for every blog that you have. This allows you to change your Title, description and keyword metatags on each blog post to make them unique, as well as to make a default home page title and description. I credit this plugin with about 30% of the credit for my rankings on some of my keywords.
- AutoMeta - This tag kind of conflicts with the All-in-one SEO packplugin, as it automatically creates the titles and descriptions. I still have to see how this works with All-in-One SEO pack
Free Website Design Book from Newfangled.com CEO, Eric Holter
Monday, February 4th, 2008In doing some research for our companies website, I stumbled across an interesting site - www.newfangled.com. They created their own system for designing websites, which looks really intriguing.
As I have gone from merely doing marketing of websites to managing the design of websites,I’ve learnt how many different options there are, and how tough it is to convey something that is still an idea in your head. Eric Holter’s claim is that using the standardized way of designing a website- using wireframes and sitemaps, doesn’t effectively communicate what needs to get completed.
The Los Angeles Times Free Local Business Listing
Monday, February 4th, 2008While searching on Google for Los Angeles Business Directories, I found that the LA Times has a free one. I had never heard of it before, and it’s free, so I figured, hey, may as well give it a shot.
If you have a business in Los Angeles, go ahead and post it there.
Top 3 Questions from SmallBusiness Owners About Online Marketing
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008Local Business Owner Three Biggest Questions about search – and the answers:
1) Do people really search for local services online?
2) Can I afford to get traffic from the internet?
Los Angeles Internet Marketing - A Local Business Directory
Sunday, November 25th, 2007As you probably know, getting links to your website is the all important thing in getting better rankings (if you have an optimized website first, that is).
Many people use article directories, press releases, putting blog links on other blogs etc.
As a small business owner, there is a very valuable and often overlooked factor - getting your business listed in the local business directoriesI am in the midst of creating a list of sites to submit your business to, for local marketing. I’ve already mentioned a great resource in the Local Search Optimization post.
Is the LA Times Getting Closer to “Getting It”?
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007This is a follow up to my first post on the LA Times’s efforts to go “Web 2.0″, after meeting with Eric Ulken at a blogger’s event.
First off, a little disclaimer… My site is ugly, doesn’t convert, and definitely is not “cool”. So I really should have no right to criticize other companies’ efforts to “get it”. Especially since the LA Time site isn’t to badly designed. It has a pretty minimalist design, and very easy to find links.
The Importance of Local Optimization for Small Businesses
Sunday, November 18th, 2007I’m currently doing some consulting work for some clients - as well as for my day job… creating and implementing a plan of action for local search. I’m realizing how much I’ve underutilized it. In the next couple of days I will be creating a guide outlining the steps you need to take to market your business locally.
In the meantime, here is an important resource from Frank Fuchs, a “Yahoo” who seems to have no qualms about stating his impressions of the company publicly. He lists all of the Local Places to submit your business to.