5 Simple Ways to Achieve Amazing Small Business Success
Image courtesy of Ohmega1982 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Running a small business is an art. You have to trust your instincts and use your talents to achieve success.
It takes a lot of hard work, research and study. Never give up on your dreams.
I’ve been running Creative Juices for over 32 years. It never gets easier. In fact, with today’s economy and the changing field of graphic design, it is a daily challenge to stay up to date and relevant.
That is why I am constantly reading and studying the news for anything related to social media marketing and changes in technology for website design and function.
Here are five simple ways you can increase your chances for business success:
- Engage the readers of your website with a variety of content. Make sure it’s helpful and useful.
- Try using pictures, polls, tips, facts or even videos in your social media mix.
- Sign up with all the social media you can keep up with. Try Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as the minimum.
- Give great customer service and you will retain your customers. And they’ll tell their friends.
- Keep your website current and active. You want customers to keep coming back for more.
For Email Newsletters you can trust
Check out the following articles. They will help you reach your goals of business success.
Facebook Marketing: Why Less Is More
7 Ways to Beef Up Your Sales Strategy
5 Ways Small Businesses Get Social Media Wrong
The 10 Commandments of Using Pinterest for Business (Infographic)
What You Should Know Before Starting Your Own Business
Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Are you an entrepreneur?
Starting a business is not easy. It can be fun, exciting and scary.
I started Creative Juices in 1981. I was a mere child. There was no internet. There was no Mac. There was little competition.
Today life is much more complicated for small business owners. There are lots of things to be aware of. I’m going to list a few of the ones directly related your business image.
First Impressions are Very Important
- Get a logo design. It must be clean, professional, and timeless. It should represent you and your company.
- Start a website. This is the hub of your business. Everything flows from and to your site. This includes all social media.
- Create an email list. You must encourage visitors to give their email addresses on your site in order to stay in touch with current and potential clients. Perhaps offer a free ebook or newsletter.
- Set up a newsletter. Regular newsletters are a great way to get people to remember you.
This is only a tiny bit of information to help get you started, graphically speaking. There’s a whole lot of other stuff you should know. My goal is to help you get your business going in the right direction.
You can never have too much information (or can you?!) Check out the following business related articles:
8 Legal Steps for Starting Your Business
Four Questions to Ask Before Setting a Price
10 Essential Features of Every Good Business Website
Here’s the latest digital media and social marketing news from Mashable:
42 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed
Mashable Weekend Recap: 30 Stories You Might Have Missed
37 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed
Find Creative Juices on Facebook and Twitter. See sidebar for links.
Don’t forget to “like” me on Facebook. Sign up for my FREE e-Newletter too.
6 Helpful Business Tips for Success
This is part of my new series of article collections. I regularly read the latest RSS feeds from blogs related to business marketing, such as Entrepreneur, Blogging Tips, Anthony Morrison and ProBlogger. In today’s busy world it’s often difficult to find time to read.
But modern technology came to the rescue. I have my iPhone, iPad and Kindle to help me catch up with my daily search for news. My favorite place to read is while exercising on the StairMaster at the gym. Every day I climb and read for an hour. Not only do I stay healthy but I get to read uninterrupted.
The following articles cover ways to be a successful business owner by boosting year end sales, how to utilize Google+ pages for your company, how to store your data in the cloud, how to advance your website’s SEO (search engine optimization) through social marketing, and how to stay out of trouble if you’re a blogger. Let me know what you think.
- A Small Business Owner’s Guide to Year-End Sales Success
- Why Your Small Business’s Google+ Efforts Must Be Unique and Visual
- Google+ – A New Way to Promote Your Business
- 5 Excellent Cloud Tools You Should Be Using
- Social Engagement is the Way Forward for SEO
- How to Avoid Legal Trouble, Income Tax Fines, and Penalties as a Blogger
Find Creative Juices on Facebook and Twitter. See sidebar for links.
Don’t forget to “like” me on Facebook. Sign up for my FREE e-Newletter too.
Thanksgiving-Eve Marketing News You Can Use
Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful for what you have. It’s also a good time to work on getting more… business that is.
Here are some helpful business marketing articles I’ve found interesting:
Measuring Offline Vs. Online Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Five New Online Tools for Finding Local Customers
Social Media: 4 Simple Principles To Convert the Harshest Critics
The Lede: 7 Writing and Marketing Links You Don’t Want to Miss
If you use WordPress to design your own website, checkout Premise:
Get Premise Ultimate for only $95.
Copyblogger Media just released version 1.2 of their Premise landing page software for WordPress, and it includes lots of cool new features and refinements.
Most impressive of all is the introduction of an innovative 8th landing page type — the social sharing page.
Premise Ultimate usually goes for $165, as it gives you:
1. All the landing pages you can build
2. Use on as many domains as you want
3. Access to ongoing optimization seminars
4. Copywriting advice from inside WordPress
5. 1,100+ custom graphics by Rafal
6. Unlimited technical support
7. Unlimited updates (you’ll thank yourself for this next year)
During their Thanksgiving sale, you can get Premise Ultimate for only $95. Yes, really.
Just use the code THANKS when you check out and you’ll save $70 on the best landing page software available for WordPress.
This deal ends promptly at 7:00 pm Pacific time on Monday, November 28, 2011. Hurry up and get Premise Ultimate before they come to their senses!
Helpful Articles with Marketing Tips for the Holidays
The holidays are upon us. It’s never too late to improve your business. Here are a series of articles I found that relate to helping you and your business succeed.
I regularly check out RSS feeds from Entrepreneur Magazine and other business related sites. Topics will range from running your business to marketing, social media, website design and blogging.
Check back often to my blog. You never know what you will find.
Enjoy reading these articles this Thanksgiving week.
Seven Easy Tweaks to Turn Your Site into a Holiday Sales Machine
Brian Solis on Five Common Social Media Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
More Small Businesses Extol the Benefits of Social Media
Social Media and Content Marketing
How to Create a Google+ Business Page
I believe blogging is an excellent way to increase traffic to your business website. The following books can help.
5 Good Kindle Books For New Blog Owners
Why not buy yourself or someone you love a Kindle Touch for the holidays.
How to Make Money Online in 5 Easy Steps
I have been a graphic designer and writer for over 30 years. Creative Juices was born in 1981. And in spite of the changing design field with the introduction of e-lectronics and computers, starting a business of any kind takes lots of hard work and perseverance. But with that said…
Starting your own online business is as easy as starting a blog.
This will not make you rich overnight, unless you get lucky. But you can bring in extra cash with a little effort by following these 5 simple steps.
- Start a blog in a niche you love. Make sure it is something you’re passionate about. I highly recommend using WordPress.org to create your blog. Because it’s self hosted you have complete control.
- Create unique, killer content. By killer I mean highly relevant and helpful content that people will search out and read.
- Sign up with Google for their free analytics, AdSense and keyword tools.
- Apply for affiliate programs like LinkShare or Commission Junction and sell other people’s products by placing ads on your site or reviewing products.
- Create your own products or services and sell it on your site and through affiliate programs. This could be anything from eBooks to T-shirts. Also check out Zazzle and Cafe Press to create products for sale. It’s free to sign up.
See how easy that was? Again, you will not make millions doing this. But some people have been know to make six figures a year with their online businesses.
If you have any ideas on making money online the easy way, let me know.
And don’t forget to sign up for my semi-regular newsletter for fun and helpful tips on marketing your new and small business, online or otherwise.
For Email Marketing you can trust
5 Reasons Why the Cheapest Website is Not the Best Choice
You Don’t Want to Look Cheap
Times are difficult for a lot of people. Making ends meet is very important. But in business it’s all about image. When it comes to how people perceive you and your company, how you represent yourself is vitally important.
Make Your First Impression Count
To be a successful business you must have a web presence. Just having your name out there is not good enough. You need to showcase your products and services. You only get a few seconds to make an impression.
You Won’t Find Your Web Designer at The 99 Cent Store
Here’s five things to look for when you shop around for a web designer and why cheap is not always a bargain.
- You get what you pay for. This is not just a cliché. The cheapest web design is not necessarily the best representation of your business. Do you really want your business to look cheap?
- Keep your navigation simple and easy to follow. People notice when a website is poorly designed.
- Most cheap websites are either copied from a template or from someone else’s site.
- Will that web designer be there if my site has errors or ceases to function properly? Do you really want to pay someone new to fix your broken site?
- Do they have a knowledge of SEO and how it works? Even a little search engine optimizing helps get your site noticed.
A modern, clean, fully functioning and easy to navigate website says a lot about your business. Update your content and website regularly and you’ll increase your chances of getting noticed.
To that end, why not call (310-791-5803) or e-mail Chuck at Creative Juices house of design. We create websites that fit your personality, business and budget. And we’re friendly too. (Chihuahua kisses are optional).
How to Switch from WordPress.com to WordPress.org and Save Your SEO Ranking
Why Should I Switch to WordPress.org?
WordPress.com is a great way to begin blogging. It’s a free service, easy to set up and use, plenty of free themes and plugins, and, well, free.
But WordPress.com does have it’s limits. For one thing, your blog’s domain name is branded for WordPress (yourblogname.wordpress.com). If you’re serious about your blog and/or website, it is vital to promote your own brand name in your url. Yourblogname.com, for example, is more professional and promotes name recognition. Being your own entity is much better than being part of someone else’s.
Also, you cannot easily monetize your WordPress.com blog. For now they do not allow Google AdSense, for example. That is why a self-hosted, WordPress.org site is a much better choice. WordPress.org is also free but there are more options and functionality. You just have to find a host and pay yearly hosting fees and domain name registration. Getting a unique, professionally designed creative WordPress theme to fit your brand image couldn’t hurt either.
I’ve been using WordPress.com for a while now. Can’t I just start a new blog using my own domain name?
Of course you can. But if you’ve been blogging for a while you will have probably built up a following. Search engines will have already found and ranked you. People may have already bookmarked your site or linked to you.
You don’t want to lose that ranking or those links. And while you can and should migrate all your blog posts to a WordPress.org system using your new url, it is also a good idea to redirect your old url to the new name. That way, anyone who has bookmarked your old site will be instantly redirected to the new site. And you will maintain your search engine ranking and permalinks.
WordPress.com now offers Offsite Redirect Support for $12 per year. I am not an affiliate of WordPress and am not getting paid to promote this service. I just think it’s a good idea. But don’t forget to renew the redirect yearly. You will not get a reminder.
Blog your way to Business Success
Blogging is a great way to promote your business
One of the most popular parts of the new Web 2.0 or Social Media is blogging. Using the format of blogging to help promote your business is a powerful way to reach new clients. The whole purpose of writing a blog is to constantly create new content. All search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, love blogs because they pick up on the new content, especially if it is optimized correctly. This is a great way for your blog to be listed high up in search results.
Blogging Tips
How does this relate to your business and it’s success? Just follow these simple steps:
- Create content that people want to read. You want to be a useful resource, so make sure whatever you’re writing about is something people will learn from.
- Include keywords, but make sure the copy is easy to read, short, to the point and useful.
- Bulleted items and lists are very helpful for those who skim.
- Make sure to include a link to your website (unless your blog is your website). Don’t include too may links to your website as search engines may interpret that as spam and reject your site.
- If you do link to your website, it’s best to link to a specific “landing page” that covers the topic of your blog.
Why not write a new blog post every day?! It’s a great new habit that will pay you back with more people interested in your business. It doesn’t have to be very long. Just interesting.
Want more information? Call Chuck at 310-791-5803.
10 Great WordPress Plugins
WordPress has become one of my favorite ways of creating a self-hosted website. Part of the reason is because of the growing number of plugins that add functionality to your site. Here are a list of some of my current favorites. On your WordPress Dashboard go to the Plugins tab, click Add New and do a search for these highly useful add-ons.
- All in one SEO Pack Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. Appears on every page and makes adding keywords and meta tags easier.
- Easy Adsense Easiest way to show AdSense and make money from your blog.
- Exclude Pages from Navigation Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. Very helpful for those special landing pages.
- Follow Me The Follow Me plugin is designed to allow users the ability to add links to their social media profiles in their blog. Shows up on the side with a pop up of your chosen social media such as Twitter and Facebook.
- Google Analytics for WordPress This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog, adding lots of features, eg. custom variables and automatic clickout and download tracking.
- My Category Order My Category Order allows you to set the order in which categories will appear in the sidebar. Uses a drag and drop interface for ordering. Adds a widget with additional options for easy installation on widgetized themes.
- My Link Order My Link Order allows you to set the order in which links and link categories will appear in the sidebar. Uses a drag and drop interface for ordering. Adds a widget with additional options for easy installation on widgetized themes.
- My Page Order My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface. Perfect if your theme is not exactly WordPress 3.0 compatible.
- NextGEN Gallery A NextGENeration Photo gallery for the Web 2.0. Lots of options to choose from.
- WP-DBManager Manages your WordPress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.
By the way, did I mention these plugins are all free? Some of them do ask for donations and I encourage you to do so. Somebody has to support these people so they can continue to create the wonderful plugins.
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