How Much Information Should You Share in Your Blog?

How Much Information Should You Share in Your Blog?

Many small business owners don’t share enough information when writing their blogs. I always tell our clients to follow the “TVA marketing rule” – be transparent, vulnerable and authentic. To do this, you have to be yourself; share your humanness.

Why would a customer or potential customer read your blog post? To get information. To connect. Writing cannot serve as a connector if there is no personal engagement.

We all have powerful stories to tell. Your stories are really good content, aren’t they? Tell your story in a way that supports the point you’re making in your blog.

Where do you get these stories? You get stories every day from your interaction with your customers to comments your customers say to you in person and online. Small stories or big stories…they are all important and worth sharing. Your blog is a conversation you’re having with your customers. Be yourself when writing and your humanness will come through. You’ll gain your customers and potential customers trust and loyalty.

Google's Hummingbird Update

Google has launched one of its newest changes to its search engine algorithms - The Hummingbird Update. Google Hummingbird will affect about 90 percent of the search requests submitted to Google.

The focal point of the change is more relevance to "conversational search," meaning a better understanding of concepts, meaning and intent, instead of just focusing on individual keywords.

Let's say you ask "where is the nearest gas station" in a Google search. Instead of a term like "gas station" being important, Google is trying to give you a better result by understanding what you mean by "nearest gas station."

So how can you leverage this important change in your marketing?

1. Understand the importance of asking and answering questions.

You already know that paying attention to the questions your customers and prospects ask makes for great content for your blog and newsletter. Google Hummingbird makes these questions even more powerful. So here are some great techniques that can help:

·         Start, or add to, your FAQ page on your website. Think of questions that people might plug into a Google search. Instead of answering involved questions on your FAQ page, link your response to a powerful answer on a blog post on your website.

·         Look at industry online for forums and see what questions people might be asking.

2. Put more focus on ongoing quality content.

The whole idea behind Hummingbird is to provide the user with a better quality search result. It is going to be pulling the user away from "sales" talk to useful information, which means you need to be providing relevant educational information on your website and blog. You might need to hire a marketing firm, such as Blue Dog Marketing, to create a larger amount of content and then to help you get it out to the right places.

3 Marketing Tools to Increase Your Small Business Marketing Results

3 Marketing Tools to Increase Your Small Business Marketing Results

Are you looking to increase your marketing results? Here are 3 tools you should be using to increase awareness of your small business offerings.

1.   Facebook. Facebook is the place to be. Create a Facebook page for your small business. This page is another avenue to send people to your website to learn more about you and your products. Also, make sure you engage with your customers and potential customers on a personal and professional level on Facebook. It’s social media, so keep it “social.”

2.   Amazon Kindle. E-books are becoming more popular. Everyday, people search Amazon’s books for information. These are actual buyers. They're not searching for free things; they're looking to purchase a Kindle book to solve what's keeping them up at night.

An interesting fact: people who buy and read books are also more likely to buy higher-priced products and programs. Writing and formatting an e-book can be time consuming, but the rewards can be huge. Use your book to answer questions that your customers have and offer solutions.

3.   Video. Include videos on your website, in your blog and on your Facebook page. This can help increase your SEO (search engine optimization). Videos help build trust with potential customers because people feel like they know you faster when they see you on video.

6 Tips for a Successful Grand Opening

6 Tips for a Successful Grand Opening

As part of our local Chamber of Commerce, Blue Dog Marketing assists many area businesses with their grand opening. Some have been successful, while others left a lot to be desired in their execution.

The purpose of a grand opening is to introduce your new business to the public. Other benefits of a grand opening are to generate immediate sales, invigorate your staff, and inform the community that you’re open for business.

A successful grand opening requires planning, promotion and publicity. You only have one chance to have a grand opening, so do it right! Here are some tips for you to hold a successful grand opening:

1.       Choose the correct date and time. It may sound easy, but it’s important that you choose a date and time that are convenient not only for your customers, but for local dignitaries and the media. Typically, the best time for a ceremony is during the business week, Tuesday to Friday, between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m.

Don’t worry about holding your grand opening on the actual day you open your doors for business. It’s important that you get everything in place first.

2.       Invite guests. You can’t sit back and hope people will show up. You need send out invitations to specific people in your community. Such people include:

·         Your local Chamber of Commerce. They, like our Chamber of Commerce, might be able to assist you with your grand opening.

·         Local government officials. Invite your mayor or town supervisor, members of the board or city council, your state senator and assemblyperson. Government officials like to see new businesses opening in their communities. It’s good business for them!

·         Anyone who helped you get your business open – your banker, contractor, realtor

·         The media. Invite local newspapers, television and radio media. Not all will come, but some might show up.

·         Invite other local businesses. Get to know other members of your business community. Your local Chamber of Commerce might be able to assist you in extending the invitation to area businesses.

You can use traditional snail mail invitations, but that can get costly. We recommend emailing invitation and posting the grand opening information on your social media, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Ask your friends and family to share your posts with their friends. You can use your grand opening emails and posts as an opportunity to build an email list of potential customers by providing a special offer to those that opt into your email list or newsletter.

3.       Plan the grand opening. Think about where you’ll hold the ribbon cutting ceremony. Who will speak? Will you have door prizes?

On the day of the grand opening, serve refreshments. It’s a celebration, after all! Serve coffee, soda, juice, doughnuts and cookies. Keep it simple.

Decorate your storefront with balloons and banners. Make it festive and have fun with it. Use giant cold air balloons on the roof or in the parking lot. If your grand opening is after dark, rent a searchlight.

If you’re giving away door prizes, have a registration table set up. Display the door prizes there too.

 

4.       Advertise. Plan a campaign with a series of inexpensive small teaser ads to run the week before the grand opening and larger ads the day before and day of. Invest in radio ads for three or four days prior to your grand opening.

5.       Publicity. Write a news release about your grand opening. Include information about your business and don’t forget your website information.  Include the news release when you invite the media to your grand opening. If no one shows up (which can happen), take pictures of the grand opening and submit another news release, with some pictures, talking about the successful, well-attended grand opening.

6.       Have Fun. You customers and potential customers will want to come back to your business if they enjoy themselves and see that you’re having fun too. Be confident about your business and enjoy the grand opening.

My mother always told me that a sign of a successful party is a happy hostess, so enjoy your own event and your grand opening will be a success.

Have You Joined Your Local Chamber Yet?

Have You Joined Your Local Chamber Yet?

You have a lot of choices today to network for your small business. Ask yourself how many of these groups actually advocate the well-being of the business community?

A well-run chamber of commerce operates like an economic development arm of the town with the intention of attracting more business to your community. Chambers of commerce also build community pride. The combination of business and community forms the essence of a local chamber.

Blue Dog Marketing is a proud and active member of the Gates-Chili Chamber of Commerce. We’ve found the value in membership in this community-minded organization. Just like joining any other group, you should ask "what's in it for me?"

Here’s what’s in it for you:

Trustworthiness. Being a member of your local chamber of commerce gives you credibility as a small business. This will help build trust with your customers.

Networking Opportunities. Networking is an essential part of owning a small business and marketing it. You need to get the word out that you’re in business and what solutions you can offer to your potential customers. Networking at a chamber event allows you to build relationships with other local businesses. You may find yourself doing business with them or they can become a referral source for you. You will learn about the other members’ businesses which increases your knowledge base of local resources for your customers, which can improve your business.

Promoting your business. You only get out of the chamber experience what you put in. If you don’t attend meetings or volunteer for events, you won’t get anything out of your membership. Participate in any events your chamber hold. Either attend or volunteer to help at events. Volunteering is a great way for other members to get to know you better.

Many chambers have great websites where each member has a page and a link to their own website. Make sure you take advantage of this excellent way to market your business. Sometimes, you can advertise on the chamber website and the advertising rates are usually very reasonable.

Our chamber offers sponsorship options to members for our monthly luncheons. This gives a business the opportunity to place advertising at the entrance to the meeting, 5-10 minutes to talk about their business and have literature at each table. It’s a great way for members to learn more about your business.

Ask to be a speaker at an event. You’ll have the entire luncheon (usually 30-40 minutes) to educate members about a topic that is of interest to them and relates to your business. At the January 2013 Chamber luncheon, Blue Dog Marketing spoke about how to use Facebook for Small Businesses. We also spoke on a marketing panel in May about business card mistakes most companies make.

Have a ribbon cutting for your business. Chambers hold these as new businesses open or you’ve renovated or moved. You can showcase your business at the ribbon cutting to fellow chamber members plus receive free publicity in the local media.

There are many additional benefits your local chamber can offer like member discounts offered by members, group insurance rates, free educational seminars, etc. Chambers are there to strengthen your business and improve the community you live and work in.

Membership to your local chamber of commerce is a great addition to your marketing mix. But, it only works if you are willing to commit the time to make it work because it is all about building relationships.

Marketing Your Products

Marketing Your Products

Marketing addresses the “why” the market needs your product. The simplest and powerful framework to market a product is to:

       -          Identify a market need or problem

-          Talk to the deficiencies of existing solutions or lack of existing solutions

-          Offer a new solution that answers the market need without deficiencies

Your marketing should not only be the sales pitch, but should also provide your sales team with the tools to replicate the story. This includes marketing collateral, press releases, campaigns, customer education tools, and competitive analysis.

Important SEO Information for Your Website

Important SEO Information for Your Website

There are many things that you should have in place to ensure your website has been optimized properly. All these things work together to help your website's overall search engine ranking. Search engine optimization (SEO) is not something that can be left out of your marketing strategy without there being negative results. Here are some tips that will help your website rise through the ranks and end up in the top search results.

Content is important to the success of your website. It needs to be useful to the reader. The content on your website needs to include good keywords. Your content must also offer value to the readers and include good images that pertain to the content.

Blog posts are a great way to bring new fresh content to your site on a regular basis. Blogs are interesting to people and give them information that they can pass on to others. Add a blog to your site and post frequently. Make the blog helpful and you will have readers returning to see what you post next. The benefit to updating content regularly is that search engines will see you as an expert in your field and the search engines will be happy to index such a valuable site.

Keywords are also an important part of your search engine optimization. This process will take a bit of time and effort but it is worth it when it comes to choosing the right keywords for your website. Start by writing down all the keywords you can think of that pertain to your business. They can be single words or short phrases. Have no less than five keywords but you can actually have as many listed as you can think of.

Once your list is complete, you want to make sure those keywords are spread out throughout your site. Wherever there is text on your site, be sure to have these keywords. You don't want to repeat keywords over and over but the rule of thumb is to have at least three keywords on each page. Include keywords in the descriptive sentence in the ALT tags for your pictures. Also, add the keywords to the Meta tags. Your Meta tags include keywords, title and description. Your company name should be included in the title and description Meta tags. When adding your keywords to the Meta tags, don't repeat any of them and feel free to add as many as you can think of that pertain to your site and products or services.

5 Easy Steps to Improve Your SEO for Your Blog

5 Easy Steps to Improve Your SEO for Your Blog

Writing a blog provides customers and prospects the opportunity to learn information about your industry and it helps raise the rankings of your blog and website within online searches.

For your blog to beat out your competition in search rankings, here are some easy steps you can take:

1.   Determine your keywords. Just like for your website, your blog requires the proper keywords. Keywords are an important part of your search engine optimization. Determining your keywords can take some time and effort but it is worth it when it comes to choosing the right keywords for your blog. Start by writing down all the keywords you can think of that pertain to your business. They can be single words or short phrases (long-tail keywords). Have no less than five keywords, but list as many as you can think of.

Once your list is complete, you want to make sure those keywords are spread out throughout your blog posts. Include keywords in the descriptive sentence in the ALT tags for any pictures you include in your blog post. Include the keywords on your blog URL. This ensures that search engines see your blog is authentic.

2.   Optimize your blog post title. Include at least one keyword in your title to increase your SEO.

3.   Link back to your website. Include internal links in your blog posts that link back to your website. This helps search engines see that you really are legitimate and an expert in your field.

4.   Make keywords relevant. When using keywords in your blog, don’t over use them. You want your post to be factual and relevant, so use your keywords appropriately.

5. Optimize your meta descriptions. The meta description is the page summary seen on a search page. Keep that description to 155 characters or less. Include keywords within your meta descriptio

SEO Tips

SEO Tips

If your small business has a web site (you better have one!), you should have a plan for search engine optimization (SEO). Your potential customers will only find your webpage through online searches and, therefore, it is imperative that you use SEO correctly to get your site up in the results list as high as you can. Here are some tips to help you attain a high search ranking.

Keywords

To reach a high ranking in search engine results, use a number of keywords related to your market niche in the meta tags for your website.

Use plural or longer variations of keywords to increase the opportunity for your site to pop up on search engines. Keyword stemming is a popular technique of some search engines. For example, if you use "consultant" as your keyword, then any searches for "consultants" or "consulting" may not have your site listed in the results. Use the longer form of words, such as adding -ing or -ly, to take advantage of keyword stemming.

Include keywords in your web copy

Search engines rank pages based in part on the density of various keywords. Repeating important keywords, without forcing them into the content, will help boost your ranking. Your website content must flow and read well, so don’t just stick keywords in.

Include video transcripts

If you post a video to your website, try to include a transcript. By including a transcript, search engines will include that content to determine search rankings.

Add a site map

A site map is a separate page that works like a directory of pages on your site. Every page that is in the list of site map is connected to other pages on the website. Use keywords and their synonyms in the link anchor text. Also, put your links in numbered or bulleted list since spiders consider the links put in this way more important.

Some no-no’s   

Never place the same content on your site more than once because search engines may consider your website spam.

Don’t go overboard with the number of keywords you use. Keep your keywords limited to a dozen keywords and phrases that your website actually focuses on. The use of analytical tools can assist you with knowing which keyword phrases are driving traffic to your site the most.

Add new content

By regularly adding new content to your site, you give search engine crawlers a reason to consider your website. Also, having great content on your site encourages people to share it with others. Word of mouth can really be the best form of advertising.

Using SEO correctly on your website doesn’t have to be difficult. You just need to pay attention to details and spend some time each month on your website. If you don’t have the time to do this, Blue Dog Marketing is here to assist you with your SEO and all your marketing needs.