Marketing

News coverage can be a big boost to your company’s success. No matter what you want the public to know about—be it a product, a service, or an agenda—press coverage not only gets your message out, but lends credibility to your business. Sometimes getting coverage is a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Rather than rely on luck, some companies hire a public relations firm to represent them. But that investment is not always necessary. Here are six steps you can take to get your company in the news on a regular basis:

1. Define your goal. Why do you want news coverage? What is it you want people to know, buy, or believe about your company? The more definitive you can be, the more you’ll be able to target the proper audience. The more you know about who you’re trying to reach, the better. Then you can determine the right media outlets to contact. Are you targeting well-educated customers with disposable income? The New York Times and business journals are two good matches. Are you looking for a younger audience who lives in New York City? WPIX is a possibility for you. Do you want to impress your fellow engineers? Look for trade publications. (more…)

Webinars allow people throughout the world learn and communicate. Particularly in the past two years, webinars have rapidly gained prominence as an important component of many marketing plans. No longer considered an afterthought, a well-crafted and successful webinar can greatly enhance a company’s reputation and sales.

One of the reasons for this rapid growth is the lowered costs of both creating and attending a webinar. Without requiring the expenditure of significant amounts of time, energy, and money traveling to in-person events, webinars allow attendees and presenters to easily attend events via the internet. These savings in time and money for the presenters are significant, ranging between 60 to 90 percent when compared to the cost of live events and depending on the event.

Social media is a very powerful medium for meeting people and doing business. This industry has rapidly matured in the past ten years. However, one of its biggest hurdles is the amount of time and effort required to build and maintain a loyal following. In most cases, sales that are done through or as a result of social media are one-to-one. Though effective, it’s not time efficient. Conversely, webinars utilize a one-to-many approach, making them highly effective and providing them with the ability to reach a worldwide audience through a single online presentation. (more…)

There in no better time than the beginning of a year to get strategic about your marketing efforts… and no better way to do it that by creating a plan for the year ahead.

If you’re like most small business owners, email marketing is just one part of what you’re doing while running your business. By creating a plan now, you can make your life easier when trying to juggle everything that come along with running your business—filling orders, waiting on customers, and the million other things that demand your attention.

Think about your approach to email marketing. When you sit down to create an email, are you as prepared as you’d like to be? Do have a clear understanding of what you’re looking to achieve, how you’re going to achieve it, and how you’re going to measure your results? (more…)

Content is currency on the Internet. It’s what people consume, share, and it’s what can help get your small business found. It doesn’t have to be difficult to shape content that is simply irresistible for your audience. Here are a few tips to keep top of mind as you consider what content to develop.

1. Write about topics people want to read

Your content should always have an audience in mind. That means you should have their needs in mind, too, not your own. Content marketing should provide something valuable. People want to read something that’s written about the things they’re thinking about (related to your business, of course) so ask yourself what concerns and delights your audience, then go from there.

2. Show people how to do things

Google’s Keyword Tool estimates that, each month, the phrase “how to” is searched 414,000,000 times and the phrase “how to videos” is searched 618,000,000 times. It’s clear that people are interested in learning “how to.” Create your own “How to” posts that discuss the things your organization offers, as well as anything else that your audience is interested in that can be related to what you offer. (more…)

You may have heard of the hottest new social media tool, Pinterest.  Pinterest is like a virtual bulletin board that allows users to find and curate images and videos. Unlike other photo sharing sites, Pinterest is focused much more on the discovery and curation of other people’s content, not storing your own. That’s why it’s caught the attention of so many organizations—big and small. It’s helping them spread brand awareness and is driving lots of web traffic.

Here are the three of the top questions I’ve heard from small businesses looking to get started:

1.“What are the differences between Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter?”

Pinterest is not an entirely different world of social media marketing- it uses a language that most social media users already know. Often, people are intimidated when they hear terms like “pin” or “repin,” but put them in the context of “tweet” or “retweet,” and finally they make sense. And when it comes to liking, commenting, and sharing—these are things you’re probably doing every day on other sites. (more…)