As 2013 approaches, below are five Internet marketing trends for small business owners to focus on.

Emphasis on Inbound Marketing Techniques

Whether you want to call it inbound marketing or simple diversifying your traffic, 2013 will see an increased emphasis on creating, nurturing, and converting leads through strategically placed content. The past year has been about the death of interruption marketing. Businesses can no longer expect to earn an audience by shouting at them or “interrupting” their daily activities. In 2013, earned media will become increasingly important as brands trying to insert themselves into the natural conversation happening on blogs, in social media, in forums, on Q&A sites, etc. It’s not enough anymore to purchase a Yellow Pages ad and expect that your audience will find you. Now, businesses need to do the legwork to make their brands appear in the places consumers are looking. They’ll be looking to do it via more strategic blogging, email marketing, retargeting, white papers, social activity and other methods.

Responsive Design Becomes The Norm

It’s getting harder to predict how a user will access your website. Instead of creating separate experiences for PC, mobile and tablets, in 2013 brands will look to create one experience to rule them all. They’ll be looking to responsive design.

Through responsive design, a site changes based on the size of the device used, making it easier to navigate on smaller devices like tablets and smartphones. Responsive layouts take developing for specific screen resolutions out of the design/development equation and make screen resolutions more of a tool than a limitation. With responsive design, site owners are able to shape the experience based on predefined minimum and maximum pixel dimensions. The result is a personalized, stronger experience with higher conversions.

While some design shops still consider responsive design an “option”, I’d argue it now has to be the standard. Even Google is recommending responsive design as the best way to optimize for mobile. If your site isn’t built on responsible design technology, it’s time to start considering it. As Tom Demers noted in his 2013 SEO Trends post, awareness about mobile is going to be the first steps for SMBs but don’t wait too long to react.

A Move Toward Big Data

Businesses have long used the trackability of the Web as a reason to invest in SEO, paid search, social media, and other digital marketing initiatives. However, the people in charge of these different marketing disciplines would often sit in different rooms. They didn’t talk to one another. Data wasn’t shared. Instead, everything was done in silos instead of working in combination.

In 2013, walls will begin to break.

The year 2012 already saw how big data was changing the practice of online marketing. However, now that we’ve seen it, more will embrace it. By taking a cross-channel view of our marketing efforts, marketers will be able to take advantage of the data they’re getting from each channel and combine their data for deeper insights. This will result in not only smarter, more efficient campaigns, but for more integrated marketing that blends SEO, PPC, PR, social media, video, etc, together for a more unified message.

If you’re not currently looking at your data as a whole, start developing a process to help you do so. Because as valuable as your data is broken out in different silos (social media, SEO, PPC), its leagues more valuable when combined and looked at as one entity.

Taking A Deeper Look at Content

Tom already spoke about the need for “thick” content, so if you didn’t hear his cry then, it’s time to give it another read. Content has long been hailed King, but it’s only been within recent month that it’s really been given any respect. With search engine updates specifically geared at rewarding high quality content (and penalizing low quality content) more and more sites will be looking to up the ante in 2013. The result will be a larger focus on creating evergreen content that provides a great value to searchers. It also means businesses will have to take a much more strategic approach to content marketing.

Businesses that get more serious about content will see great gains, both from the searchers who consume it and the search engines who can’t help but rank it.

Creating a True Process For Social Media

It’s been a bit of a gold rush out there in social media. For a bit, brands were getting involved without much thought as to why they were there or what they were hoping to get out of it. We saw lots of dollars thrown at Twitter use, Facebook marketing, and creating Pinterest strategies. And while that won’t slow down in the coming year, applying metric to this avenues will become increasingly important. Because as the medium matures, so must the results.

This will start with creating a smarter social media framework. Identifying your objectives for getting involved and then building out the metrics that will show you whether you’ve reached them or not.

Brands will look to create stronger internal pipelines to help them respond to the insights they’re gleaning via social. It’s not enough to hear consumer complaints. There must be a system for how to move social messages from one department to another so that everyone benefits and everyone is tuned in.
Brands will move from a single Community Manager to adopting tools to help them manage the whole process.

The result will be that social media becomes a more legitimized marketing practice. Those who are ready to take it to the next level will benefit. Those still hoping to “make do” with the primitive brand use will not fare so well.

Those are five big Internet marketing trends I see coming down the pipeline for 2013. What do you most have your eyes on?

Relationship building will be big in 2013 especially now that SEO can be dealt with offline with citation. You don’t necessarily need links any more as Google is intuitive enough to pick up on non linked name drops and the associated content that are being named with.

The post Internet Marketing Trends For 2013 appeared first on Small Business Trends.

For example, maybe you’re promoting an eBook on your website and the landing page exists to encourage the download. Or you’re running a paid search campaign where the ad drives users to fill out a contact form. The landing page is what serves up your call to action and gets someone to take that next step.

If your landing page doesn’t drive users to take the action you’ve laid out for them, it failed. Don’t fail.

Below are seven tips for creating powerful landing pages:

Have a Clear Objective

For a landing page to be successful, the objective of the page must be clear, both to you and a person landing on it. For your part, you need to identify exactly what is this page is designed to do. Do you want a user to:

• Fill out a contact form?
• Download something?
• Make a purchase?
• Take another specific action?

Once you know, all action on the page should be crafted to push users toward that one objective. If it’s not relevant to the action, it doesn’t belong on that page. That includes content, visuals, extra buttons, etc.

Match Your Headline to What Came Before

As users, we always want to make sure we’re in the right place. You can help your visitors feel safe on your site by matching the headline of your landing page to the text they clicked from. If the ad text you used matches the landing page headline, this is a sign to users that their jump made sense and they’re exactly where they need to be.

If it differs, even slightly, then users may become uneasy or unsure of their footing and hit the back button. You want visitors engaged with your site content. You don’t want them wondering if they took a wrong turn.

Highlight Important Points

Let’s be real, most people who land on your website will be skimming it. They’ll be on the hunt for the words and phrases that are most important to them and which tell them your website is relevant to their needs.

So know what those words and phrases are (this is where keyword research comes in) and highlight them on the page. Use them early on in your content, toward the beginning of sentences, and then again at the end as this is where their eyes are trained to go. Make it easy for visitors to find these words inside the rest of the text.

Talk Directly to the Visitor

Because your landing page is designed to specifically convert a visitor, you want to talk directly to them. Use “you” and “your” as you explain how your product or service benefits them. Talk directly to their biggest pain points and focus on how you’re going to help them and how much easier it will make their life.

The more you can talk to someone and help them visualize your ability to help them, the stronger your argument.

Vary Paragraph Length

Another way to create a page that is engaging to users is to vary text length used in paragraphs. What this does is to help create visual separation to make the page easy to read and digest. It’s also more visually appealing than landing on a page filled with large blocks of text.

Varying paragraph length will help draw users into the content and make the content easier for them to skim.

Provide a Clear Call to Action

Considering we’re talking about a landing page, you’d think this would be obvious. But you’d be surprised how many sites create landing page without clear calls to action!

Make sure the CTA is obvious to a user, either via graphic element or large, linked text. If the copy is short, then placing a CTA on top of the page, as well as toward the bottom should suffice. If the page is longer, then you may want to add additional CTAs to make sure that users notice them. But if this isn’t clear, then the entire message of the page has been lost.

Remove All Distractions

This is essential. If it does not inspire someone toward the specific conversion, it does not belong on the landing page. This includes navigational elements, other links, extraneous text, humor, images, etc. Everything on the page should be related to the action you’re trying to get someone to take. If it does not, then it’s a distraction. And it should be removed.

Creating stronger landing pages is something every business owner should aspire to do. Your landing page is very often the deciding factor in whether someone converts or they get distracted and leave your website.

The post 7 Tips for Creating Powerful Landing Pages appeared first on Small Business Trends.

But are your efforts falling flat?

Below are 5 reasons reporters may just be ignoring your pitch:

There’s No Relationship

The first time you reach out to someone shouldn’t be to ask for a favor or a mention on their blog. It should be to help them and address their needs. Pitching someone for media coverage when you don’t have some level of pre-existing relationship is going to be an uphill battle. This is why it’s so important to identify media contacts EARLY and then dedicate time to getting on their radar. Maybe you first reach out via Twitter in a way that solves their problem. Or you start strategically commenting on their blog. Or you give them a shoutout by highlighting their expertise to your readers. Taking the time to build that relationship before you need it is Rule 1 of online networking and will help ensure your pitch gets read.

You Pretend Your BFFs

If you have a close relationship with someone, it’s okay to reference that in your pitch email. In fact, it would be kind of weird if you didn’t. However, if you don’t know someone that well (or at all) don’t try to fake it in the email. Sometimes because we’re nervous or because we want to come off as “friendly” or “conversational” we take too many casual liberties when addressing someone. We call them by nicknames we see others using. Or we reference information we’ve stalked online. Or we simply don’t give them the respect they deserve. For a blogger or reporter, this is a serious turnoff and may actually cause them to believe you’re mocking them. Not a good way to start a new relationship.

Impersonal Emails

While you don’t want to pretend to be buddy-buddy, you also don’t want to send an email that reads like an ad in the Yellow Pages. Do your homework before you pitch someone so you’re able to target it as much as possible to their interests.

Take the time to:

• Learn the reporter’s name
• Get an understanding of what they cover on their blog
• Learn their tone
• Get to know their audience and who they are
• Check for information about HOW they like to be pitched/contacted

Once you have all this information you can craft a message that is customized for them and speaks to their audience and interests. An email that is properly targeted will always win out over one that is not.

There’s No WIIFM

We’re all busy. For us to take time out of day we need to know WIIFM – What’s In It For Me? What will trying your product or recommending your service get me? How will it make me look like a hero to my audience? How will it make their jobs or lives easier? Because that’s what I’m after. I only care about your product when I know how it will benefit my audience.

When you’re laying out the WIIFM, don’t just list off the ins and outs of your product or brag about its latest and greatest feature. Focus on pitching the story. We don’t care that your oven cooks food 20 minutes faster than other ovens. We care that we can use those 20 minutes to spend time with our families or to read our kid a book. That’s the WIIFM. It’s not about the product. It’s about the story.

Insulting the Blogger

Be careful when talking to bloggers and other media to make sure you’re giving them the respect they deserve. You want to avoid things like:

• Assuming you know their audience better than they do
• Offering money for a post right off the bat
• Offering an exclusive when you’re pitching other outlets
• Belittling their professionally (accidentally or intentionally)

Often times these things happen accidentally simply because we’re not careful with our words or the phrases that we use. Take extra time to read through your pitch email to make sure you’re not stepping on any toes or writing something that could possibly offend.

We all need to pitch bloggers and reporters from time to time to help our brand build awareness. Taking the time to craft our pitches properly can greatly increase your odds of getting read.

The post 5 Reasons Writers Ignore Your Pitch appeared first on Small Business Trends.

But relief is coming.

First, if you’re not familiar, the term click fraud refers to manufactured clicks designed to inflate an advertiser’s cost or a publisher’s earning. For example, if a publisher recruits his friends and family to repeatedly click on your ad on his site not because of interest, but to raise your costs, that would be deemed an example click fraud. There are many, many other ways click fraud can take place like the creation of click farms, automated tools, and other deceptive practices. This is the war Google is currently fighting.

However, even Google realizes that sometimes click fraud isn’t intentional. And as such, they’re announcing new ways of handling reports of click fraud to make the ecosystem more transparent and friendlier for us nice guys.

The new policy was announced in a post on the Google AdSense blog. In the post Google acknowledged that sometimes well-intentioned business owners find their accounts suspended and/or disabled for “invalid activity” without a clear understanding of why or how to fix it.

Google said:

While the vast majority of publishers who sign up for AdSense do so in good faith, unfortunately there are some bad actors out there. As you can imagine, we can’t reveal all the tools we use to keep bad sites and bad traffic out of our network. But sometimes these tools result in good publishers who become a source of invalid activity having their accounts disabled without much recourse.

To help good publishers, Google is announcing several changes.

First, Google will now consider tenure more actively when responding to detected invalid activity so that “trusted” publishers will see suspensions, instead of terminated accounts. There is also a new form to submit more informative appeals.

Google is also vowing to provide more details on invalid activity’s causes. When invalid clicks are detected, Google will send out emails and notifications with more information and instructions to help publishers understand what is happening.

Lastly, publishers can also take advantage of the expanded AdSense Academy, as well as a new video series that explains why policies exist and how publishers can make sure they’re working inside of them. The first looks specifically at invalid traffic.

For small business owners, the changes are designed to help you be a more informed AdSense customer and empower you to understand what is happening on your site or with your ads.

Below are some additional AdSense best practices to keep in mind:

Do: Use One Click Optimizer

One Click Optimizer is a great resource from Google designed to help you choose AdSense ad locations and formats for your website. If you’re just getting started, this is a great way to learn how the pros do it and what’s most successful.

Do NOT: Have Too Many Ads

The maximum number of AdSense ads you can have on your website is three banner ads, three link ads, and two search box ads. Any more ads and Google will end up banning your account. And while you’d think it’d be hard to fit that many ads on your site to begin with, well, people try.

When thinking about the number of ads on your site, realize that more ads isn’t only a turn off for Google, it’s a turn off for users, as well. No one wants to land on a website and see it covered in ads. Find a balance that helps you earn additional revenue, without sacrificing the authority and professionalism of your site.

Do: Match Ad Colors To Your Website

Ads customized to the look and feel of your site will perform better than ads that do not look integrated. To integrate your ads, make the background and borders of your ads the same color as the background of your page where the ad will be placed.

Three techniques to consider:

• Blending: Make the background and borders of your ads the same color as the background of your page where the ad is placed.
• Complementing Colors: Use colors that already exist on your site, but don’t match the background and borders exactly where the ads are placed.
• Using Contrast: Choose colors that stand out against the background of your site.

Do NOT: Promote Prohibited Content

Do not include or link to the following content:

• Adult content
• Copyrighted material
• Drug, alcohol, and tobacco-related content
• Gambling content
• Violent content
• Weapon-related content
• Content that advocates against an individual, group, or organization
• Hacking and cracking content
• Sensitive content
• Sites that offer compensation programs
• Sites that use Google Brand features

Above are just a few tips to help SMBs get more from their AdSense activity. Are you currently using AdSense?

The post Google Increases Transparency Around Click Fraud appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Below are five things you can do to seriously boost your social efforts over the next 12 months.

Use Visual Content

If the hockey stick traffic growth of Pinterest has taught us anything it’s that users seek out, consume, and go crazy for visual content. Marketo recently compiled an engaging infographic (see? Visual content) that showed how restructuring content to be more visual is the future of content marketing and a trend that your business should hop onto. That means trading in some of those weighty words for items like photos, videos, memes, motion graphics, and other engaging content types for your audience to share across social platforms. Our minds and attention are scattered. Find a way to present your message in a visual format and your audience will be more apt to listen.

Develop Real Metrics

If your social media efforts aren’t currently tied to real business metrics, make this a priority in 2013. Get smarter about social media marketing by identifying your business purpose for engaging and the metrics that support that purpose.

For example, if your goal is to increase brand authority, then you’ll want to document how many shares your brand is getting, where you’re being cited, where you’re being linked, etc. If you’re trying to shorten your sales cycle, then you want to benchmark the cost per customer today vs. the cost per customers this time last year. Developing business goals and metrics is what takes social media from just “tweeting” to building a social company.

Understand Promotion

The biggest mistake I see business owners make with social media is they spend all this time creating content and building cool stuff, and zero time getting it out there to their audience. Get comfortable with self-promotion and go out there and find your audience. Build your email list, use tools to find your followers on Twitter, get people to subscribe to your Facebook page, show yourself off at local events, etc. Make sure people are aware of your business and of the content that you’re spending hours producing. Create your media list and get serious about blogging outreach. The only way to grow your business is to be actively making people aware of it.

Expand Your Efforts

If you’re like many other small business owners, you probably have a Facebook page. And maybe even a Twitter account. That’s great. But why not look to some other channels this year and test the waters? If you’re a local florist or a wedding planner, why not get involved with Instagram to help you spark that visual content and show off your assets? If you’re a consultant, maybe this is the year you start that blog or participate in Q&A sites based in your expertise. Social media is extending past Facebook and traditional screens. Find new ways to get in front of and engage your audience.

Get Help

If social media still looks like a giant question mark to you, consider getting help. Consult an outside agency or bring someone into your team who understands social media from a business perspective. Someone who will help the company to create a social media plan to guide the company’s interaction for the rest of the year. For SMBs watching their budgets (and who isn’t?) this may be as simple and cost-effective as hiring a social media company to give you an audit to help you understand the opportunity and the strategies you should be using to take advantage of it. Once you have your roadmap in your hand, social media becomes a lot easier to implement and see value from.

Above are five powerful ways any business can improve t heir social media power over the next twelve months. What’s on your list?

The post 5 Ways To Improve Your Social Marketing in 2013 appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Evernote Business is designed to help small- and medium-sized businesses take advantage of their internal knowledgebase by giving them the tools they need to collect, discover, collaborate, search for, and share ideas within their organization for a more productive environment. The new Business version of Evernote makes use of the features free and premium users already loved, while adding a suite of business-only tools and capabilities including:

Smart Data Ownership: In Evernote Business, organizations have the right to access, use, manage and modify any Business Notebook and its contents. All Personal Notebooks and their contents remain completely private and controlled by the user who created them. Users fully retain the rights to their Personal Notebooks and Personal Notes, which cannot be accessed by the business in any way.

Simple User & Data Management: With the Evernote Business Admin Console, Admins can invite new users and manage existing users, as well as view and manage all of the Business Notebooks created by members of their organization, all in one place.

Companywide Business Library: Every Evernote Business account includes a Business Library, which is a collection of Business Notebooks that are available to all team members. The Business Library is the place where employees can share, discover and leverage the collected knowledge of their colleagues.

Simplified Billing: Pay as you go monthly by credit card, or pay for a whole year by credit card or invoice. Your company can easily increase or decrease the number of users at any time by contacting our Customer Success Team, ensuring that your Evernote Business account always meets the needs of your organization.

Store Everything, Access it Everywhere: Use Evernote to capture everything important to your business in a single place, including notes, research, presentations, documents, and more. You can even save entire webpages with the Evernote Web Clipper. Evernote works on smartphones, computers, tablets and via the Web, so everything your company captures can always be accessed in the office and on the go.

Knowledge Discovery & Continuity: Explore and discover the collective knowledge of your entire organization. Whether users browse the Business Library, use Evernote’s powerful search, or discover relevant content with our Related Notes features, Evernote Business makes any workplace effortlessly productive.

As both a former business owner and someone who manages multiple teams, I’m most drawn to the Business Library, which becomes a central repository for company information. Anyone in your organization is able to create Notebooks and add to them so that they’re searchable to anyone in your organization. Over time, the amount of information that would rest here could become a huge hub for your business. Whether it’s a human resource-type knowledge bank, a client-specific notebook documenting all work from all teams, or notebooks about company goals or milestones, aggregating the information into one collaborative environment and making it searchable will benefit many organizations.

Think of how many documents get lost in your organization. Or how useful it would be to find out a coworker solved the issue you’re facing weeks ago. The best part is Evernote gives you this information without you even needing to know the information exists. You start working on your Notebook and Evernote will find information it feels is relevant to what you’re doing. It does the work for you.

Another feature I like is the ability for users to maintain and leverage personal notebooks, without making them sharable to the whole organization. Performing a search in Evernote will give users access to everything they’ve created + everything the business has created. This is a great way to increase efficiency, while not sacrificing privacy to do it.

Of course, there are also potential problems with Evernote Business…

In order for your organization to really benefit for Evernote Business there needs to be a clear understanding of how Notepads and information are to be tagged and what the process is for creating them. Without that, it’s easy to see how a team of users entering in their own information in their own way could quickly become a bit of a mess and something that is hard to navigate and understand. However, if you’re able to get everyone on the same page and using Evernote for Business the same way, it could replace many of the Google Apps that business owners rely on.

What do you think of the new Evernote app? At $10 a month per user, is there a place for it in your business?

The post Evernote Business: Know What Your Team Knows appeared first on Small Business Trends.

You’re right. So why not combine some of your efforts and make your life a little easier?

One way to lighten your content writing load is by becoming a trusted curator. Instead of putting the burden on yourself to write the content, you can take advantage of the content others are creating (and you’re already reading) in your industry by sharing links, pointing your readers to third-party resources, and highlighting the smart things that others are saying.

Why should SMBs look to picking up the content curator habit?

Below are five powerful benefits.

1. It’s Easier On Your Back

As mentioned above, becoming a content curator takes some of the production load off your business, by allowing you to focus on sharing instead of the heavy lifting. If you took our earlier advice, you’re already reading blogs on a regular (maybe even daily) basis. So why not help your audience by acting as their filter and posting a list of the articles that you found most useful over the past week. Work it into your daily reading pattern by keeping a document open you can drop links in as you find them. Then, at the end of the week, you have something you can post without investing too much extra time, perhaps just adding a few sentences as to why you found that link useful/relevant.

2. Reduce Costs

Hey, not only is content creation not free, it’s also not cheap. The time you spend writing, creating or purchasing images, or editing content all adds up. By taking some of the burden off yourself, you also remove some of the cost. When you can publish a link post in 20 minutes instead of dedicating four hours to creating something from scratch, that’s four hours you can spend in your business. It’s also content you didn’t have to pay a trained writer to help you with.

3. Diversifies your Perspective

Of course, being a content curator isn’t just about ease. It’s also about the new perspective it brings to your audience.

By sharing what you’re reading, you broaden the view of the world for folks who look to you for advice and expose them to new voices. They may be familiar with your take on the industry, but now they’re able to hear it from others as well and benefit from that different perspective and their different experiences. As a blogging business owners, this is perhaps one of the best things you can do to help educate your audience.

4. Builds Relationships

You know what happens when you start linking out to other authority sites in your industry? They notice. And then they start checking out your blog. And your website. And they start linking back and talk to you.

Strategically featuring third-party content on your site or in your marketing is a great way to build relationships in your industry and let others know that (a) you exist and (b) that you like what they’re doing. And don’t be surprised when they return the favor.

5. Adds Value

The best reason to pick up the content curating habit is an easy one. It simply adds value to those in your industry by being their filter and introducing them to only the good bits. Just like you, you’re readers are busy, too. They don’t have time to read every blog out there related to your industry. By helping separate the signal from the noise you do them a great service and add value to their day, giving them a steady flow of munchable content to serve their needs. You’ll also ensure that they’ll keep coming back to your blog to see what juicy nuggets you’ve found for them today.

How can you work curation into your content habits?

• Use tools like Google Alerts, Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, and other social sources to help you find fresh, relevant content
• Create a weekly blog series where you pick out the best posts from the last week and share them with your audience.
• Add curated links to content you write to add depth and additional insight.
• Create an email newsletter designed to “catch up” your readers on what they may have missed.
• Use curated links to feed your social media updates.
• Create a Scoop.it or Storify account to help you organize your curated finds and share them throughout the day

Content curation isn’t an easy job. It takes time to sift through blog posts to find the articles that truly deserve attention and merit. However, it’s an important one and a task that should be used in conjunction with other content efforts.

Do you make it a habit to be a content curator?

The post 5 Reasons To Pick Up The Curator Habit appeared first on Small Business Trends.

As a blogging business, where should you be promoting your blog to help connect with readers and help them fall in love with your content?

Below are a few places to start.

1. Email Signature: Include a link to your blog URL in your email signature so that every time you message a customer, vendor, new contact, colleague, or even friends from high school you’re promoting your blog and encouraging them to check it out.
2. Email Newsletter: Already investing in email marketing? Why not incorporate some of your blog content to help customers catch up on what they may have missed? This may mean republishing posts via email or setting up a From The Blog section in your newsletter that provides a snippet of article text before driving readers back to your website.
3. Print Promotional Material: Hey, just because that brochure or handout resides offline, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be using it to promote what you’re doing online. Make sure customers are aware you’re a business whose blogging by putting the URL and blog-related CTAs on printed promotional material.
4. Customer Receipts: Whether they made a purchase in your store or through your website, put your blog URL on receipts to build awareness and encourage people to check it out.
5. Packaging: Why not send customers home  with something else to check out?
6. Community Happenings: Sponsoring an event or just taking part in a community activity? Make sure to include literature that mentions your blog or direct people there during conversations.
7. In Comments of Other Blogs: Have a list of blogs that you read and respond to regularly? Include the link to your blog either in the text or in the URL field as a reference point for who you are and what you’re knowledgeable about. You don’t want to get in the habit of spamming blogs with your blog URL, but if you’re adding to the conversation, it doesn’t hurt to leave it.
8. User Social Profiles: Have a Twitter account? What about Facebook? LinkedIn? Pinterest? Google+? I bet there’s space to include a URL.
9. Professional Communities: Don’t forget about professional communities. Whether you’re a small business taking advantage of a networking site like BizSugar, part of the local Chamber of Commerce, or other  professional communities, share your blog!
10. During Presentations: Speaking at a local or national event? Using a PowerPoint or a Keynote presentation? Don’t forget to mention your blog!
11. On Business Cards: It’s not just for your phone number anymore. Include your blog URL + all social profiles!
12. Press Releases: Have big news to reveal? Direct readers back to your blog for more information about what’s happening.
13. Guest Posts/Contributed Posts: Get the word out about your blog by guestposting on authoritative sites in your industry. Not only will you get in front of their readers, but you’ll be able to point people back to your blog, as well.
14. Syndication Opportunities: Are there any blogs or news sources in your industry that syndicate content? By making your blog a trusted source for them to pull from, you get your blog in front of a whole new audience!
15. News Aggregators: Regardless of topic, get your blog listed in popular news aggregators to help people find it. For example, AllTop is a great source for looking up blogs on any topic where you can suggest your site be added.
16. Industry Lists: If there are people in your industry blogging, there are others creating lists of their blogging. Seek out industry-specific blog directories and make sure your blog is added to the list. For those of us in the SEO community, the Big List created by the folks at Top Rank Marketing is an industry staple.

Above are just a sampling of places to help you scratch the surface. How do you make sure your blog gets seen?

The post 15+ Places to Promote Your Blog On The Web appeared first on Small Business Trends.

How do you make sure you’re being heard and you’re not just tweeting out into oblivion?  Below are seven best practices.

Use characters wisely

Twitter gives you 140 characters to convey your message. And as short as that may seem, the truth is your message needs to be even shorter to be most effective. The average Twitter user is looking for quick nuggets they can click on for more information OR that they can ReTweet and share with their friends. You need to grab their interest early on in your message if you have any hope of getting them to act.

And don’t forget to leave some room in your tweet so that users can manually RT you, as well. By taking up the whole 140 character limit, you make them unable to add their own input into your message, limiting the chances they’ll share your bit of wonder with their world.

Personalize your content

If someone is following you, they’re doing it because they want YOUR take on life and the industry. So give them it to them in everything you put out. Want to share a link you found really useful? Great. But instead of tweeting [post title + link] personalize the tweet by adding personal commentary or by picking out a great line from the post and using that instead of the title. This not only shows you actually read the post, it gives your followers a meaty nugget to hold on to.

Find your magic number

How many tweets a day should you send out? It depends on your audience and their expectations!

To find your magic posting number it will take experimenting to see how many updates your audience best responds to. Ultimately, you want to post enough that customers look forward to your updates and you give them a reason to follow you, but you don’t want to post too much to the point where customers are ignoring you because you’re bombarding them with too much information. Test out different tweeting patterns to help you find your rhythm. There are also tools and services you can use which will analyze your Twitter stream to show you when your audience is most “alert” to your updates.

Find ways to engage

Entering social media means being proactive about hunting down conversations and opportunities to speak on behalf of your brand. Just because your customers are lurking on these social channels, doesn’t mean they’re ready to start the conversation. You need to be prepared to do that.

• Do keyword searches to find people talking about your topic and then jump in and be part of the conversation
• Find conversations related to your area/neighborhood and introduce yourself
• Start conversations with users who have retweeted your content
• Answer questions or concerns for current or prospective customers

There are opportunities everywhere to insert yourself into the conversation and be involved, but you have to find them. Don’t expect them to come to you.

Listen to your audience

The good news is your customers will tell you if your Twitter strategy is working. They’ll tell you through increased RTs, blog comments, site traffic, additional social media interaction, etc. So listen to them. If you see that certain types of content are doing better, it’s a sign your audience wants more of that. Try wording tweets differently and taking on different approaches to your engagement until you see what works and what gets a stronger reaction.

Use tools to monitor effectiveness

By using tools to help you schedule your tweets and monitor engagement, it allows you to spend more time crafting the tweets and less time chasing around mentions. Depending on the size of your business, this may be as simple as setting up saved Advanced Twitter searches or using tools like SocialBro, SproutSocial or Buffer to help you increase the effectiveness of your account.

Have fun

If you’re not enjoying your social media interaction, you can bet your customers aren’t enjoying it either. Social media gives you a front row seat to the conversations happening around your industry, while also inviting you to host the show. Enjoy it! Find your customers and talk to them. Ask questions. Share resources you enjoy. Social media shouldn’t be a chore. It’s a new way to talk to your customers about your business.

Above are some of the tips I’d recommend to help get your brand heard on Twitter. What’s worked for you?

The post Be Loud On Twitter Or Don’t Bother Trying appeared first on Small Business Trends.

There’s the sense that a single bad review can kill your business. Or that a handful of unhappy customers can send new customers away and ruin your brand in the search engines. And while it’s important for a small business to build an online review strategy, it’s equally important to remember that we’re all human. A few bad reviews won’t kill your business. In fact, those negative reviews may even help.

Sound crazy?

Below are five ways negative reviews can actually be good for business.

1. They give you legitimacy

What would you think when checking out a new business and saw nothing but glowing reviews and five stars? You’d think the reviews were fake. Or paid for. Or written by the business owner’s mother. We don’t trust businesses that appear “too good to be true” because we know that we’re all human. We all make mistakes. And we all have bad days. If your online reviews are a true reflection of who you are, they’ll account for some of those bad days.

The simple fact is we trust a business more if there are at least some negative reviews because it helps us feel like we’re seeing both sides. We want to know the soup was cold or that the dress didn’t fit. As a consumer, these reviews also help us feel more prepared. If we can see the problem points in the service or product, we can determine whether they’re “deal breakers” for us. If they’re not, we feel confident making the buying decision.

2. You identify (fixable) weak points

As noted above, consumers look for negative reviews to identify weak points in your product or service. Maybe your dresses run small and they should order up. Or maybe your waitresses don’t spend enough time tending your customer’s needs. Consumers value this information so they know what to expect. As a business owner, this is valuable information so you know what to fix.

Negative reviews help your business to improve by showing you areas where you can do better. Instead of fearing these types of reviews, welcome them as an unfiltered look into your business. Once you know what’s not working or areas where customers got tripped up, you can solve the problem and make the experience better for everyone. Instead of fearing these comments, thank the people who leave them.

3. You show off your customer service skills

Yes, that’s right. I just said you should thank your customers who take the time to let you know where you can do better. This is invaluable information. It also gives you a chance to show off your customer service skills and let onlookers see how much you value your customers. Consumers can tell a lot about a business by how they respond to criticism. If you handle the situation with grace, maturity and (when appropriate) humor, it tells them you’re a business confident in what you offer and how you treat people in business. If you get defensive or argumentative, it tells consumers you’re a business they may want to avoid. So respond wisely.

4. You give your army a chance to respond

If someone has left a negative review on your business that you feel is unfair or undeserved, show it to some of your biggest supporters and ask what they think. If they feel the review is warranted, they’ll tell you and then you can fix it. But if they don’t, they’re likely to go respond to that comment for you and help set the record straight. They’ll actually come to your defense and serve as an army of support for your brand.

Consumers are passionate about the people and the places they do business with. If they see someone talking badly about “their” coffee shop, they’re going to hop into that conversation and fight for you.

5. You can change the conversation

As much as we don’t like to see negative comments left about our businesses, they do give you the chance to change the conversation and that person’s experience. By responding maturely, validating the critique, and offering a promise to do better, you can significantly increase someone’s impression of your brand. And, really, if someone is unhappy with your service, don’t you want the chance to make it right?

Reviews are important and the more positive reviews you have, the more likely it is a new customer will feel comfortable taking a chance on your business. But negative reviews also have their place and can offer some benefits to any business.

Speaking of reviews, the holidays are coming. Have you created your holiday online review strategy? Get crackin’!

The post 5 Ways Negative Reviews Are Good For Business appeared first on Small Business Trends.