12/29/2009
Who’s Foursquare Mayor of your local business? If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, but would like to join the hottest, hippest new social networking tool for promoting a local business, read on. I’ll explain Foursquare – the still tiny but fast-growing mobile app phenomenon that could become the Twitter of 2010.
Foursquare combines elements of both Facebook and Twitter into a mobile social networking tool that lets users — mostly 20- and 30-somethings in urban areas — locate each other via mobile posts and join up at popular places. It’s a friend-finder, electronic game and city guide all rolled into one, and thousands of small businesses nationwide are quickly jumping on board. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments
Posted by Daniel Kehrer
12/03/2009
As the U.S. economy continues to stumble along, small business owners are searching for low-cost and no-cost ways to promote their businesses and get their name in front of potential customers. “Even with talk about a recovering economy, businesses are still watching every penny,” says Drew Gerber, CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a boutique PR firm based in North Carolina.
PR is a perfect way for many small businesses to get attention and attract new customers. “Nothing has people knocking on your door like PR,” says Gerber. “Most companies know this, but not all have the budget to hire a PR firm. The good news is you don’t have to.” Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments
Posted by Daniel Kehrer
11/19/2009
Dear Dan: The last time I tried to raise prices it was a disaster. Customers revolted. But I’ve cut costs as far as I can, and profits are too thin. How can I raise prices and not lose business? — Once Burned, Price Shy
Dear Price Shy: Millions of small business owners across America seem convinced that raising prices in a bad economy is financial suicide. Held hostage by industry pricing and recession fears, many business owners believe that working harder and earning less is the only way to survive.
But that’s wrong, says pricing specialist Dale Furtwengler, a CPA and president of Furtwengler & Associates, a pricing consulting firm. Cutting costs is like dieting. It rarely produces lasting results. Furtwengler contends that the economy isn’t the issue. Rather it’s the inability of most small business owners to understand the value in what they sell, to make changes if necessary and communicate that value to customers. Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment
Posted by Daniel Kehrer
11/05/2009
Want to really target your advertising in a cutting edge medium that could surpass even the Internet in terms of advertising growth in the next few years? Then take a look at the emerging field of digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising, also called out-of-home video advertising.
DOOH delivers hyper-local, personalized and engaging messages to highly specialized, captive niche audiences on out-of-home screens (the so-called “4th screen”) popping up in millions of locations everywhere.
This, say the media pundits, is sure to be the next major growth area in local advertising. It’s laser-targeted stuff. By putting DOOH in your advertising arsenal, you can place video ads and content in front of just the right people, at just the right time in just the right place. Here’s how: Read the rest of this entry »
No Comments »
Posted by Daniel Kehrer
10/22/2009
If you have a website – even a modest one – or use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, using the right keywords or keyword phrases is vital to success. Well-chosen keywords give you a better chance of showing up near the top of search results. But not just any results. What you want are the most relevant searches conducted by your best prospects.
Keywords tell the search engine robots what your business is all about. Selecting good ones is harder than you think. The bots aren’t really that smart, so you have to be clever in what you feed them. Experts at Network Solutions, a top domain registrar and web hosting firm, compare it to placing “bait” on your site. The bait attracts the search engine “spiders” that crawl billions of website pages and index what they find. Most entrepreneurs use common sense to create keywords. That’s fine, since they must appeal to real people as well as search spiders. But many keywords are not common sense, and anything you come up with still must be properly implemented to be effective.
Here are 7 steps to improving your keyword power, drawn from experience here at Business.com as well as Network Solutions: Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments
Posted by Daniel Kehrer
10/16/2009
Today, most businesses are scrambling to hold onto customers and market share. Some are succeeding; some aren’t. What makes the biggest difference?
According to marketing guru Maribeth Kuzmeski, the single most important thing setting successful business owners apart is their ability to connect. “If you can build strong relationships and connect with your customers, you will get your piece of the proverbial pie,” says Kuzmeski. “If you can’t, you’ll be scrambling for crumbs.”
So how do you avoid having to grub for the leftovers? Gather your strategies and tactics and start changing the way you work. Even if you’re a “lone wolf” type, the idea is to forge better business relationships and a network of colleagues and contacts who will stick with you. “And best of all they will voluntarily recommend your services to others,” says Kuzmeski. If you’re ready to ramp it up, here are some tactics that can start getting you immediate results: Read the rest of this entry »
3 Comments
Posted by Daniel Kehrer
10/06/2009
Want to see the future of picturing products online? Visit the website of one of the companies specializing in 360-degree product photos, virtual reality (VR) 
images, user-controlled product zoom, hotspots and multi-media VR that also combines sound. Forget flat, boring 2-D images. This stuff will bring a new “cool factor” to your website, and can literally put you into a different dimension from your competition. Businesses using 360-degree product shots are producing huge benefits such as:
6 Comments
Posted by Daniel Kehrer
10/06/2009
PART II: In Part I of this piece I profiled Google Product Search, a still little known (but free) service that lets you submit your own product information so potential buyers can more easily find what you are selling. The key to 
successfully listing your products is to provide Google with the right information on your products — that is, the specific “attributes” they are looking for, and not necessarily the way you describe your products on your own website or in marketing materials.
The attributes below come from inside Google itself, so they are a surefire way to improve your results in search listings if you use them right: Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment
Posted by Daniel Kehrer
10/02/2009
PART I: 
Ever heard of Google Product Search? Don’t worry, most businesses haven’t (it’s still in beta). But if your business sells products, it’s a service you should get to know in a hurry. Even better, it’s free.
Basically, Google Product Search helps buyers find and purchase products of almost any kind across the Internet. Businesses can submit product information to Google Product Search so that potential buyers can quickly and easily find you online. Google hasn’t put much promotional muscle behind this yet, so even finding the right place on their site can be a channgle. But you can just follow the links in this post.
Here are four reasons to consider submitting your product information to Google Product Search: Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments
Posted by Daniel Kehrer
09/25/2009
In case you’ve been off-planet for the past several years, “social networking” has become the talk of the Internet. And more to the point, it’s now an essential tool for business, having moved from experimental curiosity to business networking necessity.
But social networking involves an increasingly complex and ever-changing web of technologies, communities and strategies that even the smartest business minds have trouble mastering. Basically, social networking is the process of creating online relationships, conversations and connections through a wide range of social media such as blogs, networking sites (think LinkedIn), web communities (Facebook), photo and video sharing services (YouTube, Flickr) and the micro-blogging site Twitter, among many others. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments
Posted by Daniel Kehrer
Get the What Works RSS feed
