Back in the good ol’ days of the web (circa 2004), it was so easy for businesses to market via the internet; all that was necessary was a functional website. But the advent of social media has made a dramatic impact with online marketing— and in a good way.

Social media is, for the most part, free, saving many marketing dollars. But just because it is free, doesn’t make it easy or cost-free, if your time is valuable. So before you jump into the social media frenzy, do your research and discover where your time and resources are best spent. A little research on the front end will save you a lot on the back end. Read More »

Celebrities, politicians and athletes and even CEO’s are doing it. Did I mention – I’m doing it too.

What are we all doing?

We’re are using Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, YouTube and other social media tools to build our audience, stay in touch and grow our businesses.

How about you? Have you been struggling in this economy to increase sales? Read More »

For many people, the key benefit of social media is letting friends and family know, at this very moment, what they are doing. This immediacy presents a challenge to small business owners, who find that they must balance this need for immediacy with their messages with the needs of running their own businesses on a day to day basis.  How do small businesses manage to create timely messages regularly?

The simplest way to do this is to use social media to talk about what is happening at your store today, tomorrow, and in the week to come. Lisa Hartwick, owner of Hartwick’s Kitchen Store, plans a lot of in-store events and uses social media to both promote the events and do a ‘recap’ of the events after they happen.  Read More »

Are you tired of hearing all about the wonders of social media but experiencing none of them? Do you want to finally start capturing the benefits of social media (increased traffic, bigger community, more clients, greater brand awareness and increased sales)?

The key to getting what you want out of social media lies in two simple but magical words:

Magic Word Number One:  CONTENT. Read More »

Want an easy way to attract qualified prospects, increase sales and reduce your marketing costs resulting in bigger profit margins?

Over the last ten years, no matter how smart or experienced you are the fact of the matter is that selling has gotten harder. It’s more difficult to get the attention of your prospects and harder to get them to the point of the sale.

With call screening, email filters, ad blocking not to mention vigilant gatekeepers, it’s almost impossible to get access to your target market. You and I know there are still plenty of buyers out there waiting to buy if you could just get their attention. Read More »

Still confused about how to leverage social media to generate leads, loyalty and lots of cash for your business?

Our 8 top experts break it into simple steps for you. Read More »

So many discussions of social media use start and end with text. And the written word is great, don’t get us wrong. But images. photographs, drawings, maybe even a video…are more than just ways to break up big blocks of texts. Images are a great way to quickly connect an emotion to the other information you’re providing. Read More »

Spent quite a bit of time ramping up on Twitter tools and techniques recently.  My goal was to learn how to use Twitter to research a market and connect with potential buyers, influencers and market participants.

Using the system outlined below, in the span of one week, I was able to more than triple my followers, drastically improve the quality of information flowing both into my Twitter account and (hopefully) flowing to my followers. Read More »