Marketing: Blog Your Way Up the Google Ladder

Boost Your Search Engine Rankings With a Blog

With over 72 percent of people finding what they need online, you must get found. A blog offers the following benefits.

Share your expertise. A business blog gives you a platform to promote what you know and establish yourself as an expert in the marketplace.

Describe and build your brand. Your brand represents what people know about you or think of when they hear of you. Focusing your blog on your expertise will help promote your brand.

Boost search engine rankings. As you continue to offer tips, insight, and advice to people who need what you have, you’ll give the search engines what they crave – fresh, quality content.

Reach the masses with less effort and money. Search engines, links from other sites, integration with social media tools, and Google Alerts are just a few of the ways a blog can help you reach people you never would have otherwise. You could start to attract potential customers, clients, journalists, and industry giants seeking fresh ideas.

“I have a newsletter that I email regularly.
Why do I need a blog?”
It’s a good idea to collect email addresses and send your subscribers valuable information regularly. But if that’s all you’re doing, how will Google and other search engines know? The only people seeing your newsletter are your subscribers. When you add your expertise to a blog, it’ll get picked up by the search engines and exposed to the world! So do both.

“But I’ve heard blogs are free and
easy to set up. Why do I need training?”
Yes, it’s true. You can easily create a simple blog at sites such as Blogger from Google. But if you want to become a serious blogger and take advantage of customized designs and plug-ins that will boost your search engine rankings and virability, you’ll want our advice and training. You’ll want a self-hosted WordPress blog with powerful functionality that makes it easy to share and get others to promote.

Awards: Lou Campanelli Award

Barbara Kasoff Receives Award for Dedication to Small Business

The first-ever SCORE Awards was held to recognize the success of America’s small businesses and individuals who contribute to small business success during a time of economic recovery.

Barbara Kasoff, president and co-founder of Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP), received The Lou Campanelli Award. The award is given annually and recognizes outstanding individual volunteerism, leadership, vision and philanthropy in support of small business, entrepreneurship and SCORE.

Kasoff is a successful business owner and has been a corporate executive for more than 20 years. She has been an active supporter for small businesses, including women and minorities, both nationally and internationally. Using her voice messaging network, Kasoff has united various organizations, enabled small business owners to share information with each other, learn from one another, and become better informed in economic and political issues.Currently, she is CEO of WIPP, a nonprofit, public policy organization that advocates for and on behalf of women and minorities. Learn more at www.wipp.org.

Find out more about the 2009 SCORE Awards.

Check out The SCORE Foundation.

SCORE Association
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Awards: SCORE Supports America’s Small Businesses

Outstanding Woman-owned Business Award: Zakeez, Inc.

The first-ever SCORE Awards was held on September 17, 2009 in Washington, D.C. The SCORE Awards recognize and celebrate excellence in and support of America’s small businesses. SCORE honored clients for their outstanding success.

Zakeez, Inc. was the winner of the Outstanding Woman-owned Business Award. The company is an ergonomics and human factors company that specializes in research and development of innovative and unique products and services. Their goal is to create products that improve the quality of life of children and help parents and babies connect. The company was founded by Yamile Jackson, a Ph.D. in ergonomics and human factors engineering and licensed professional engineer. She used her personal experience, work and education to invent the award-winning “The Zaky®.” This product is used in hundreds of hospitals and thousands of homes and child-care facilities, and by preemies, ill, healthy and special-needs children worldwide.

Just after starting her business, Jackson turned to Houston SCORE for advice and mentoring. SCORE experts have helped her develop her business plan and marketing materials, such as brochures, posters and a Web site, www.zakeez.com.

Want to learn more about the SCORE Awards? Check out http://www.score.org/SCORE_Awards_2009.html for all the details.

SCORE Association
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Accounting: Record Keeping 101

Bookkeeping Basics: Boring with Benefits

Entrepreneurs, by nature, are charged up and enthusiastic about running their businesses. Perhaps the last thing they want to think about is recordkeeping. How boring! Yet, how important! It is a must to keep good books and records. Tracking your revenue as well as your expenses lets you know whether you’re making or losing money. It enables you to prepare financial statements that may be needed for loan applications or other reasons, and recordkeeping is required for tax return preparation. Here’s what you need to keep in mind:

Decide how you’ll keep records.
Today most small business owners use software or online accounting solutions for recording income and expenses. There are many easy-to-use no- or low-cost options.

Retain receipts.
You’ll need to keep receipts, invoices, canceled checks and other paperwork to support tax deductions claimed on your return (the IRS provides guidance on record keeping in Publication 583. Whether you use expandable folders or scan paper receipts into your computer, make sure your system protects the records and allows for easy retrieval.

Set up a separate business bank account.
Don’t co-mingle your personal affairs with your business finances; you’ll complicate your record keeping and probably miss out on tax deduction opportunities. Also, it’s a good idea to obtain a credit card used solely for your business.

You’ll want your recordkeeping tasks to become routine. Setting aside time on a regular basis to record your income and expenses will help establish good recordkeeping habits. Or you may want someone to do this for you (an employee or an outside bookkeeper/accountant).

Barbara Weltman, Guest Blogger
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Manage: Outsourcing for Efficiency

Save Time & Resources

In these economic times, resources are limited in many businesses today which make outsourcing an option to get a project or task done with a fixed cost.

The following options can be considered.

• A  small company can consider partnering with a larger company by providing their expertise as a subcontractor. This can be done by registering with the state and bidding on state contracts. In most states there is a department of administrative services that helps a business who has been in business for 2 or more years. In Connecticut, www.das.gov and www.sba.gov offer matchmaking events where small businesses are introduced to larger businesses for tasks that they need help with. Many larger companies use smaller companies to subcontract work to.
• It is also possible to find companies who can produce, fulfill and ship products to buyers which allow design and marketing to stay in house. This is a process where a manufacturer will drop ship merchandise and stock inventory for a fee. If a service business needs help…temporary help is an option. Part time help makes sense in busy times and in slow times you are not locked into a fixed payroll.
• Outsourcing human resources and management tasks that are labor intensive and costly makes sense. Payroll is very common and ends up being more cost effective than hiring an accounting firm or hiring a full time employee.
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When things can be outsourced it allows the company to focus on its customers and sales. Look into the options that make sense for your business.

Share ideas that have worked for you to make your business run more efficiently.

Julie Brander, New Haven SCORE
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Marketing: Just Pick Up the Phone and Call

Make the Connection.

Email, Blogs and social media are great. Quick info and a sense of connection.

But, when was the last time you actually talked to your 10 best customers?

The recession is easing, but the economy is still in a state of flux. Do your clients have a personal connection with you?

Set aside a day and call your top clients to find out how they are doing. No rush. No pitch. Just get feedback.

Real relationships and trust take time. The investment in picking up the phone to call can reveal emerging client needs, bring feedback on your services and can build loyalty–because you show that the client is important to you as the business owner.

Workshop: Creating Customer Loyalty
5 Tips on Customer Service
Managing Client Expectations

Christine Banning, SCORE
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Marketing: Reach Women Prospects in Social Networks

Women and Social Networking

Women predominate in many social networking websites. That’s what Brian Solis’ stats say and this graphic from InformationIsBeautiful shows.

Graphic credit: InformationIsBeautiful

Why More Women?

Those commenting on the Mashable post Women Rule the Social Web speculate as to why:

• Whether being moms or running home-based businesses, women are at home more and have a greater need to socialize, one says. Others doubt this because there is more computer access in workplaces.
• Women have less free time than men. Thus they use less time-consuming methods of socializing, such as social networking and social media.
• Women talk and communicate more than men offline as well as online.
• Women are more comfortable relating, men more comfortable doing.
• Women generally type faster?

The comments also contain questions about the stats themselves (duplicate accounts? active accounts?) and demographic effects (ages, incomes.)

Several readers are skeptical of the quality of some womens’–probably younger womens’–interactions.  “It doesn’t surprise me that women rule the social web. The majority of their time is spent twittering celebrities and uploading drunken photos and stalking ex-boyfriends on Facebook.” Despite this comment, and with other evidence that that those of all ages are using social networks, your current and future women customers will be found there.

Reaching Women Prospects

Regardless of the reasons, the overall message is clear:  if your small business wants to reach women in the future, you and your marketers will need to get good at social networking and social media marketing.

Related Posts

• How to Use Social Media to Reach New Customers
• 5 Ways to Make The Most of Social Media for PR
• Web 2.0 Marketing: Friedman’s 4 Steps into Social Media 

 

Peg Corwin, SCORE Chicago
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Contest: DREAM BIG Small Business of the Year Award

Apply or Nominate a Small Biz Today

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce presents, “DREAM BIG Small Business of the Year Award” contest sponsored by Sam’s Club, now through December 18, 2009. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants to recognize America’s small businesses for being the backbone of America’s economy. Award nominations are due on December 18, 2009 and award applications are due on January 15, 2010.

Criteria & Eligibility
To qualify, each business must have fewer than 250 employees, have gross revenues less than $20 million in 2008 and be able to attend America’s Small Business Summit, May 17-19 in Washington, D.C.

Eligible applicants will be judged on financial performance and business history, staff training and motivation, community involvement, customer service and business plan or strategies and goals.

Find Out More
Visit the web site for more details. Get applications and nomination forms here. If you have additional questions, you can contact summit@uschamber.com directly.

Best of luck!

SCORE Association
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Disaster Planning: Be Prepared

Cover Your Assets

Entrepreneurs are optimistic and don’t want to dwell on the dark side. Unfortunately, bad things can happen—a fire or flood can wipe out inventory, a storm can cut electricity for days or longer, a customer can be injured on your premises. These occurrences can be financially costly and emotionally draining, unless you plan ahead with adequate insurance and disaster planning.

Make sure you have all necessary insurance policies in place before you open your doors for business. At a minimum, you need a business owner’s policy (BOP) to cover your business assets as well as provide liability protection in case third parties (customers) suffer injury. If you have any employees, you’ll need workers’ compensation as well as short-term disability in some states.

You’ll need to avoid insurance gaps. If you use your personal car for business driving, make sure your car policy covers accidents while on business. If you have a home office, check with your insurance agent to determine whether your homeowner’s coverage provides protection for your business assets and for liability claims from business visitors. You may need to add onto your homeowner’s policy or obtain a BOP.

With storms and other natural disasters making headlines, don’t fail to plan for the worst case scenarios. Be certain to regularly back up data on your computer (preferably to offsite servers) so you can recoup information if computers are damaged. Think what you’d do if your business location was not operable; maybe you and your staff could work remotely. Write plans for you and your staff to follow in case of emergency.

Learn about the types of insurance you may need for your business from InsureU.

Barbara Weltman, Guest Blogger
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Go Green: 10 Valuable Tips to Preserve Our Environment

10 Ways Your Biz Can Go Green… And Save Money

Businesses are making it their business to help save natural resources. Many of these tips will not only save the earth, but also help save money.

1. Buy energy efficient equipment.
2. Buy energy efficient light bulbs.
3. Buy hybrid cars.
4. Use environmentally friendly soaps and cleaning supplies.
5. Provide products and services that are environmentally friendly.
6. Get educated about how to “go green”. 
7. Allow employees to work from home to save gas.
8. Send documents electronically whenever possible.
9. Recycle paper, boxes, bags and cups.
10. Reuse whatever you can and recycle whatever you can’t.

Not only will these tips save our natural resources it will also minimize business expenses.  Can you think of other tips that will be useful in business?

Julie Brander, New Haven SCORE
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