Bloggertone

If you are unsure as to whether or not you should blog for your business, the following story may help you to make up your mind. A company blog is a huge asset, research has shown that companies who blog get: 55% more visitors; 97% more inbound links; and 434% more indexed pages The more indexed pages your company site has, the more chances it has of showing up in search results. The more inbound links your company site has, the more valuable the search engines view it and the higher they…

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Netiquette can be described as the convention or standard for communicating online. This will include communication on the Internet (blogging, chat forums etc.) email, or work collaboration. It could also be very applicable for off line networking. Today, I will focus on Networking and Email Etiquette. It begins when you go to a networking event and come home with 20 business cards. You have met them, know their name and have conversed with them at the event. Your follow up email should look…

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As a small business owner looking to promote your products and services are you overwhelmed with all the choices presented to you? Social Media (facebook, twitter, linked in, you tube and more), traditional advertising (radio, tv, yellow pages, direct mail, newspapers and so on), websites, blogs, article marketing, tribe syndication, forum marketing, podcasting, SEO to name just a few. If you are like many business owners that I meet there is so much choice that you end up doing nothing or…

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You have spent hours preparing a document for presentation. Your PowerPoint slides are all ready. You’ve submitted all the documents you’ve been asked to submit. You know exactly what you’re going to say. When you go through your material, you discover a howling typo. Ah, it’ll be grand, you think. They’re not going to turn down your business just because of a little spelling mistake. No, they can’t. But you don’t want to give them any reason to look unfavourably on you. It’s…

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The final part of this Do or Die Marketing Plan deals with measurement and application of learnings. We all know the famous quote by US retailer John Wanamaker “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Well, it’s a cop out! Marketing is an investment. It should not simply be viewed as a cost. As with any investment, your marketing has a duty to give you a return. The only way to know whether your marketing is performing or…

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Before we start. Why do you use Twitter? No, not that reason. Why do you ‘really’ use Twitter? Let’s be honest, if Twitter didn’t allow us to grow our business, find leads, make connections… and improve our bank balance, we wouldn’t use it as much, would we? Once we agree on this, we can start to look at Twitter through a different lens. Rather than seeing it as a place to pass the time, it becomes an instrument to network more effectively. What’s wrong with that When…

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Some months back I wrote a post here on how to avoid bring boring with your blog.  While this is not a direct follow-up, I have noticed that blogs such as ’10 ways to make your blog a success’ etc. have completely overtaken the more traditional storytelling approach. While there are advantages to lists, I personally think they are more suitable for an instruction manual or Lapland and here’s why: simply put, who actually wants to read a list! Admittedly, I have used them a lot in the…

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Who’d have thought it – Facebook made it past the two year fad milestone, Twitter put ‘tweet’, ‘tweeps’ and twitterati’ on the map, and Google+ planted itself in the middle with a virtual beaming smile. If we add Bebo, LinkedIn, forums, blogs and Branch out to the growing following – I ask one question. Has social media made us too socialable? Before the days of social media (yes, there was a day, like the days before mobile phones and TV), we saved our social interactions…

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Do you find you seem to rub people up the wrong way while at networking events? Do you normally get on with people in your social circles? If the answer is “Yes” to both those questions, consider these possibilities: You choose your friends, you do not choose who will be present at a networking event You are comfortable in small groups, but are petrified when surrounded by strange people You are great at organising events for friends and family, but perhaps feel out of control when…

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Too often businesses decide that they want a new website for no particular reason. Often this decision is made because the owners of the business themselves feel the current design is tired and they want something ‘new and fresh’. This is where the trouble begins. A website revamp should be approached with care and attention, and there should be definite reasons for heading down this, usually very expensive, path. Who Is The New Website For? Your website is for your potential and…

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