When you run your own small business, or even a major franchise for that matter, your business will always cost you one of two things or both at the same time. These two things are time and money. In cases where you have a lot of money you can spend the money and save yourself time.
This is usually the case of major corporations. They make millions of dollars so they just pay money to get all their marketing needs taken care of. Unfortunately for us small businesses we have to rely on spending time instead of money because the money we get is not as much a profit as is the multi million dollar organizations. This article will cover my personal top 3 free advertising techniques that may take a little time but well worth getting the extra prospects to your business.
My first and most reliable form of free advertising is article writing. What you are reading right now is an article that I have written to get my name out there and branded. If you write articles and submit them to article directories you give yourself a good chance to get traffic from the directories themselves plus others may use your article on their site or in their ezine. The key to getting others to use your article is to offer valuable information that others can use.
Valuable tips and advice will get your article added to an ezine or website which will brand your name and send over even more products to your product or service. More to this is the backlinks you will receive. Any online marketer knows how valuable a backlink can be for your search engine rankings.Further to all these positives an article that others read and find valuable put you in an “expert” position instead of just another sales guy trying to sell some corny product or service.
When marketing online credibility is very important and article marketing can only add to your credibility, this of course if you are putting out quality content and not just junk. All these positives are the reason I think article marketing is the number 1 free advertising method. My second favorite free advertising comes from forums. Now when you are in forums you have to keep in mind you are not there to sell your product or service, so don’t go to a forum and start spamming every message board with your biz opp because that is a recipe to get banned from every forum.
What you should do however is add a catchy line along with your website URL in your sig file and never mention anything about your opportunity. What you should do is help as many people as you can on the forum. This also makes you look like an expert and not just another joe blow. Be very active on the discussion boards and you will see some quality traffic coming from just your sig file.
My third favorite free advertising method is social networking. There are hundreds of popular social network sites out there. Youtube, Facebook, Myspace just to name a few. These three are the juggernauts of social networking. My favorite to use is Youtube and Facebook. Youtube you can post catchy videos and have your website URL in your profile and if your video is good enough it can spread like a virus to so many eyes around the globe. Talk about a ton of free traffic.
With Facebook they have a marketplace that regulars visit on a daily basis. You can also join groups and help others with problems they have and make yourself look like an expert once again. With all the methods above, the key is to portray yourself as a professional and an expert in your field. If you look like an expert people will not just shrug you off and go on to the next guy, they will want to hear from you again and again because they know you know what you are talking about. Eventually you can build a relationship with these people and convert them into buyers of your product or services which of course is your ultimate goal right?
Showing posts with label small business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label small business. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The Importance of A Good Website Design for Small Business
by: Alexa Peters
Your website is the hub and center of your online business; it is the virtual representation of your company whether your company exists physically or not. When you are doing business online, people cannot see you physically like how they could if they were dealing with you in person. Hence, people do judge you by your covers. This is where a good web site design comes in.Imagine if you are running an brick and mortar company. Would you allow your salespersons to be dressed in shabby or casual clothes when they are dealing with your customers? By making your staff wear professional clothes, you are telling your customers that you do care about quality. This works simply because first impressions matter.
This is the same case with your website. If your website is put together shabbily and looks like a 5 minute “quick fix”, you are literally shouting to your visitors that you are not professional and you do not care for quality.
If you have a totally professional looking website layout, you are giving your visitors the perception that you have given meticulous attention to every detail and you care about professionalism. You are organised, focused and you are serious about your business
Here are some good design practices to follow:
1. Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.
2. Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.
3. Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.
4. Make sure your website complies to web standards and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on potential prospective visitors.
5. Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.
About the Author
Do you need someone to review your current site or you need help in coming up with a design for a new site, the visit us today! http://www.larymdesign.com. We specialize in small business website design.
Your website is the hub and center of your online business; it is the virtual representation of your company whether your company exists physically or not. When you are doing business online, people cannot see you physically like how they could if they were dealing with you in person. Hence, people do judge you by your covers. This is where a good web site design comes in.Imagine if you are running an brick and mortar company. Would you allow your salespersons to be dressed in shabby or casual clothes when they are dealing with your customers? By making your staff wear professional clothes, you are telling your customers that you do care about quality. This works simply because first impressions matter.
This is the same case with your website. If your website is put together shabbily and looks like a 5 minute “quick fix”, you are literally shouting to your visitors that you are not professional and you do not care for quality.
If you have a totally professional looking website layout, you are giving your visitors the perception that you have given meticulous attention to every detail and you care about professionalism. You are organised, focused and you are serious about your business
Here are some good design practices to follow:
1. Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.
2. Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.
3. Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.
4. Make sure your website complies to web standards and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on potential prospective visitors.
5. Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.
About the Author
Do you need someone to review your current site or you need help in coming up with a design for a new site, the visit us today! http://www.larymdesign.com. We specialize in small business website design.
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