Small Business News: Marketing Your Online Business Like Arianna Huffington
With the announcement today that online media giant AOL will buy the Huffington Post for $315 million from entrepreneur and founder Arianna Huffington, online business owners everywhere should take note. Though Huffington certainly may have had more resources than most start-up entrepreneurs when she launched her venture six years ago, she used the same basic online marketing techniques available to all online entrepreneurs while building her business. What tools are available to grow your business in the online world?
News
HuffPo sale shows online businesses viable. Whatever else the success of the Huffington Post demonstrates, it shows the value of online marketing in powering phenomenal growth. Today, small business owners must take heed of this fact whether their business is an online product, service or site or whether they simply use a product service or site to market it. Slate.com
“Paid” vs. “organic” traffic and which is better for you. Blog entrepreneur Ana Hoffman spends her weekend Webcast discussing the differences in traffic, but admits there’s only one kind she’s really interested in. Hear more from this podcast of the show. Traffic Generation Cafe
Trends
How “user experience” equals branding in online businesses. Another way that virtual or online businesses (or just digital products in general) differ from more traditional products is in areas described with phrases like “user experience” or “user flow and virality.” This is the case even if your Website is the marketing tool for another product. If your Website doesn’t work, don’t expect sales or new clients. Fast Company
Online marketing means going viral. Gail Gardner talks about a major consideration in the world of digital marketing: owning or controlling your content versus sharing freely and letting your message spread. It’s clear which practice Gail prefers. GrowMap
Social Media
Blending social and location-based marketing online. Samuel Axon looks at how some brands are harnessing the combined social networking and check-in features of Facebook places to push brand awareness to the next level. Are you looking at incorporating all of the social media tools at your disposal to market your business. Sprout Social Insights
How to win Facebook friends and influence people. Tom Parnell’s post couldalmost be an update of the classic Dale Carnegie book adapted for the age of the Internet (and specifically Facebook. Tom suggests techniques and asks for suggestions on the way to becoming a social media influencer. What’s your tip? Kikolani.com
Twitterology
Are you being a good Twitter citizen? We’re not mentioning any names, but somebody around here *cough* (Big Cajun Man 
) has come up with a list of things he thinks are rude for you to do on Twitter. We’re also pretty sure we’ve done one or two of them ourselves from time to time, so let’s review. Working Hard On The Internet
Getting the lingo down. Ever tried to communicate with another human being using only words incorporating 140 characters at a time? Thank heavens, then, that Twitter involves typing out your thoughts. And also, thank heavens for this comprehensive guide to the best in Twitter shortcuts. Sian Phillips
It’s all about the numbers? Here’s a completely different Twitter strategy than what you may have heard before. Also, in direct contradiction to a post above “tweet in blocks.” We’d like to hear your strategy for Tweeting. Go ahead and leave it below. Traffic Generation Cafe
Online Marketing
Learning the backlink basics. Aside from all the social media marketing, much online marketing comes down to simple research and implementation. Here a back link strategist gives us a look inside the impact back links or inbounds links (one of the most important factors in search results) will ultimately effect any sites marketing campaign. Have a look. DannyWhitehouse.com
President, Egg Marketing & Communications
Founder of JustRetweet
Director of Marketing, 352 Media Group
[...] particular, Small Biz Trends notes the tools that Arianna used are available to all small businesses to get noticed and build an online [...]
I really liked all the links you’ve provided especially ‘How to win Facebook friends and influence people’. With the craze Facebook has created, I think this is one of the most excellent platforms to use to reach out to people from all over the globe. Thanks for sharing!
Riya Sam
Training for Entrepreneurs.com
There is one more lesson to be learned from the Huffington Post: play well with others. On the home page of the Huffington Post, like Drudge, the Daily Beast and others, they post a headline and when clicked, a synopsis. But if you want to read further, you are only then taken to the real source- the creator of the original article.
But Huffington learned to play well with others: they credit the source, not on their home page, but on their synopsis page. And, apparently, the sources didn’t complain especially as the traffic grew. Everyone won; Huffington became a treasure chest of information and drove traffic to their sources.
Small business owners don’t have the time or the resources to create compelling content, but they should learn from Huffington and bring in compelling content from 3rd parties, as long as they learn to play nice in the sandbox.
Well thats all well and good, but as someone here implied means nothing to the sole trader or the small business owner who is looking at internet marketing. It’s hard enough for everyone to keep above the economic downturn nowadays.
So yes she may have used “basic online marketing techniques” but we all know that means little if you have the spending power of a small country.
Whether your business is focused on the internet or not, online marketing will always be a good business strategy. Potential customers are bound to search for products and services through the internet as a matter of convenience anyways.