Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Creative and Cost-Effective Internet Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

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This is a guest post from L. Drew Gerber, CEO of www.PublicityResults.com.

Marketing your small or home-based business should be a fun endeavor, but most importantly it needs to be cost-effective.

When you use the Internet as your platform, the possibilities are endless. Increasing your customer base is all about getting the word out. Awareness is key and all you have to do is pick up the megaphone! Here are a few tips you can use:

Free media leads

Free services such as http://www.PitchRate.com can help you get valuable media coverage. This is a great way to find the media and build relationships with them. Experts and small business owners who have signed on with PitchRate have had great results pitching journalists and getting their expertise out to the world. It offers an amazing opportunity to gain free publicity for you or your business. Sign up and you will receive free daily opportunities via email to speak with the media about topics and trends related to your business or expertise.

Article Portals

Free article portals allow you to post expert articles on the Web to promote your business. They offer a great opportunity for you to implement your SEO marketing plan by writing articles with specific keywords that will drive more traffic to your Web site.

Free press release distribution

Free press release distribution sites like http://www.1888pressrelease.com allow you to post press releases on the Web related to your business and its happenings. They offer another great opportunity to implement your SEO marketing plan and build your business’s Internet presence. One of the hardest things about PR is getting the information out there and read by potential customers. Sites like these provide an effective platform to help increase your Web site traffic.

Social Networking

Free social networking sites, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, offer companies endless possibilities to publicize their products and services. Social networking connects you with potential customers, existing customers and partners to build your business. It allows you to get a feel for what is happening in your market and to provide excellent customer service. Create a fan page for your business on Facebook and offer special promotions just for your fans. Before you know it, the word will be spread throughout the network. Do the same with Twitter.

Video Portals

Post videos to free portals like YouTube and Metacafe to increase your Web site traffic. Many of these portals will allow you to link to your site as well as offer a cool platform to market your business. Have fun and be creative with it. You never know; it may go viral.

What’s most important about these free marketing opportunities is the ability to test the waters. You are investing your time, but it’s a great chance to take some risks, be creative and have fun with your marketing plan. When it’s time to invest your money — if you even have to — you’ll have realistic expectations and a good idea what your target market is interested in.

L. Drew Gerber is CEO of www.PublicityResults.com and creator of www.PitchRate.com, a free media tool that connects journalists and the highest rated experts. Gerber’s business practices and staffing innovations have been revered by PR Week, Good Morning America and the Christian Science Monitor. His companies handle international PR campaigns and his staff develops online press kits for authors, speakers and companies with Online PressKit 24/7, a technology he developed (www.PressKit247.com). Contact L. Drew Gerber at: or call him at 828-749-3182.

Create a Presence Through Social Media

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social media

This is a guest post from Chuggin McCoffee of The Coffee Bump.

No matter what you may have heard, it really does matter how you manage your reputation online as a small business. This is your opportunity to dive into a competitive niche market and come out on top by using social media to your advantage!

To begin with, what type of social media profiles do you have set up? It is important for small business to have a number of social media profiles, but the catch is that you need to have enough time to cultivate them. It won’t do you any good to sign up to any and every social media website if you can’t put in the effort. You can start with the most popular choices in Facebook and Twitter, and work on nurturing genuine relationships with people.

If you are a Twitter user, a helpful tip for small businesses is to start following people in your area of interest. Within social media, it is so important to be a giver and not a taker, so if you start to follow people first, create conversations, and offer advice, people will be drawn to you. The point is to use this relationship approach to make connections with people so that they will be interested in what you have to offer. On the flipside, people will be incredibly turned off by you if all you do is self-promote and spam, spam, spam.

Once you have cultivated a loyal following on Twitter, you can start to create updates about your business. Anyone and everyone out there always pays attention to a deal or free offer, so if you are hoping to get more traffic to your website, you can use tweets about discounts and deals to attract attention.

Last of all, use any number of Twitter apps that have a keyword tool. This can benefit a small business because you can start plugging in the name of your brand or company to see if you are being talked about. If you are a very new company, you can plug in specific keywords that you are targeting to find out what people are discussing. As an example, if you are selling cosmetics as a small business online, you can type in cosmetic related keywords to get into conversations on Twitter about that topic. This gives you the opportunity to get to know people in your niche market and then further draw them back to your website when the opportunity presents itself.

It really is that simple, but being successful as a small business through social media takes effort and commitment. Are you ready to get started?

For a wide selection of all things coffee, check out Chuggin McCoffee’s website at The Coffee Bump.

Bring Your Website Back to Life

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You had the best of intentions when you started your website, but it is not getting many visitors and you haven’t touched it in months–or even years. It’s not hopeless! Here is what you can do to bring your website back to life and start generating traffic (and ultimately revenue) from your site.

Fix what’s broken. Check the navigation on your site. Do all of the links lead visitors to active pages? Run a link checker (such as the one at http://www.addme.com/link-checker.htm) to see if there are dead links on your site and fix any you find. Is your contact information correct? Is the copyright date current? Are you still promoting your “upcoming” October, 2008 event? Are there features on your site (e.g., audio or video, widgets, tools, etc.) that no longer work? Does your site have a Flash intro? (Lose it. Now. Really.) How long does it take your site to load? Visitors will not stick around waiting for a slow site. Before you do anything else, get your site up to date and working well.

Add content. When is the last time you added articles, news, event listings, press releases and other content? Uh, huh. I thought so. That is too long ago. Get a few things on the site immediately, and make a plan to continue adding new content at least every couple of weeks.

Get social. Attract visitors to your site by participating in social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. Social media is about creating relationships, not selling. However, when you engage with people who share your interests, many of them will visit your site to read your new articles and learn more about you. Bookmark your new (and best) stuff on sites such as Delicious.com, Digg.com and others.

Participate in forums where your target market hangs out. Network with people there. Remember, it’s not about selling, it is about creating relationships. Create a profile. Participate in discussions and be helpful to other members. Create a signature file that you use in your forum posts so that people who are impressed with your knowledge and sharing can visit your site.

Start an email list. When people come to your site, ask for an email address so that you can keep in touch with them. Offer tips, news and other information they want to receive. Let them know they will be the first to learn when you have new content on your site. Bribe them to sign up by offering a free ebook, audio program or other downloadable bonus. I use Aweber to manage my email lists.

Start a blog. One reason many people do not update their websites is that they can’t. A web designer set it up for them, and when they want to add or change anything, they have to get the designer to do it. With a blog, you can easily add content whenever you wish. Add a blog to your existing site, set up a blog on a separate site, or (in extreme cases) consider tossing out your current site and starting over with a blog. If you are truly intimidated by technology, you may want to hire someone to set up the blog. Once it is up and running, though, you can take over.

Keep the conversation going. Once you are actively participating in social networks, adding content to your site and/or blogging, keep doing it. Respond to comments on your blog. Send out news and information to your email list. (You can use the RSS feed from your website or blog to automatically generate a newsletter with Aweber.) Guest post on other blogs and invite other bloggers to post on yours. (Use http://BloggerLinkUp.com to find compatible bloggers.)

It won’t happen overnight, but you will see your site come back to life with more traffic than ever before.

Put Your Business on the Map with Google Maps

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Do Google search for a type of local business (e.g., “Houston chiropractor”) and you will see Google Maps listings at the top of the search results. So how can you make sure your business shows up there? It’s easier than you might think and the best part is that it’s free! 

Here is what you need to do to make your business show up in Google Maps local business listings:

Claim your business listing in Google Local Business Center. http://Google.com/lbc You will need to verify that you own the business. Then make sure all of the information listed for your business is correct.

Categorize your business properly. What will people be searching for when they look for a business like yours? You may list up to five categories.

Include your top keywords are in your Google local business listing description. These keywords may include the type of business, top products, services, location, etc.

Provide as many details as possible to make your listing complete. You can include hours, the payment types you accept and more.

Add a coupon to your listing. You may include a printable coupon with your Google Maps listing.  Give customers a special introductory price on their first visit, a percentage discount, or a free bonus with purchase.

Encourage customers to post reviews. People trust peer reviews. If your business has lots of reviews, those reviews provide social proof about your business. A big caution: Never write fake reviews praising your business—when discovered to be phony (and they often are) fake reviews destroy your credibility.

On your website, include the name of your city, surrounding cities and even neighborhoods, if appropriate, along with your keywords. For example, “Landscaping and lawn care services for residents of southwest Houston, Stafford, Sugar Land, Missouri City, and eastern Fort Bend County.” This will help your overall search rankings.

Get links to your website. Links help to build your credibility with the search engines. When you control the appearance of the link, include your location as anchor text. For example, a good anchor text link might be, “Pete’s Pizza serves San Diego’s best pizza,” where San Diego’s best pizza links to your website.

Google Maps provides an excellent way for local customers to discover your business. Optimize your Google Maps listing and your website to get more customers to your website and bring more customers to your local business.

SEOing Up Your Site or Blog

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This is a guest post from A.J. Wilcox. A.J. has been in love with Internet marketing for 3 years. He is a local Internet marketing expert who currently resides at Orangesoda.com where he is the team lead over 400+ SEO campaigns.

Once you start a website or a blog, you may have wondered, “I built it, so why haven’t they come?” The truth is that Kevin Costner’s epiphany no longer holds true for the Internet. There are now so many millions of websites out there, that you need to get word out that you have something unique to offer (and please, have something unique to offer!).

So, How Do I Get Traffic?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making the pages of your site relevant for chosen keywords. There are basically two sides to the SEO equation – keywords in your content & links pointing to your site.

Since Google owns more than 2/3 of the searches in the U.S., it’s safe to assume that if you get to the top of a Google search that lots of people search for, you will have traffic. So how do you get there?

Start with Your Site

You can’t directly control the links pointing to your site – you can influence them, but if you could control them, it would be a conflict of interest. You can, however, control your own site! The search engines know that you can change any aspect of your site you feel like, given that you aren’t limited by your site’s technology. Take advantage of that control.

Choose one keyword per webpage that you believe someone would search for. Add that keyword as often as you can on your page without going overboard and making it look ugly to one of your readers. You can add it in the:

  • Page title (This one’s important)
  • Headers
  • Text content
  • Image descriptions
  • The name of the page itself

Once you’ve picked a keyword (a really relevant one) for each page, and added them into these page elements, you will be super pleased with the results in just the first month. Still impatient? One month is actually really good for SEO – it does take time, so plan on it.

Finding Balance

You should find the delicate balance between writing for users and writing for search engines. For instance, if your site was a skydiving business in Virginia, and you chose the keyword “Virginia skydiving,” you might create headings similar to the following:

  • For the search engines: Virginia Skydiving – The Best in Virginia Skydiving
  • For your user: Looking to go skydiving in Virginia? You’ve come to the right place!

The first one uses the keyword twice, and the second one just uses a weak variation of the keyword. A happy medium might be something like:

  • Virginia Skydiving – Have the time of your life skydiving in Virginia!

You can see how strong SEO can cater both to search engines AND your users.

You Are Futureproof!

Links are the currency of the internet, and that currency is inflated. The content of your site is finite. Do that right, and it will be a boon for your site visibility for years to come.  If you target businesses in a specific geographic location, get in touch with the local internet marketing experts – OrangeSoda.com for the most optimized on and offsite work for search engines.