Outsourcing: Have You Explored In Sourcing as an Option? | Small Business Odyssey

You are here: Home / outsourcing / Is Outsourcing the Right Option or Should You In Source?

Is Outsourcing the Right Option or Should You In Source?

October 18, 2011 By Ron Passfield 1 Comment

 

Small business owners frequently turn to outsourcing instead of in sourcing for their online small business marketing.  However, it has been my experience that in sourcing is a great option.

Have you considered what your staff or sub-contractors are capable of doing in terms of marketing your small business online?  

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Everywhere we are encouraged to outsource our online activity to increase our productivity. Have you thought of insourcing as an alternative to outsourcing for your small business marketing? The benefits of insourcing over outsourcing are many (besides saving you money). You may find that your staff have hidden talents that you can employ not only for small business marketing, but also in other arenas of your business.

Marketing Style: How Do You Market Your Small Buiness? | Small Business Odyssey

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What is Your Marketing Style?

October 15, 2011 By Ron Passfield Leave a Comment

Are you aware of the marketing style that you use in promoting your small business?   Developing a consistent and congruent marketing style is one aspect of effective business branding.

This point was brought home to me by Nancy Marmolejo, a visibility expert, who teaches small business owners to “step into the spotlignht”  by understanding and developing their preferred marketing style.  She suggests that if you use trial and error to develop your style it will cost you time, money and effectiveness.   Your marketing style is what you use to persuade people to take action (basically, your influencing style)

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

Nancy Marmlejo introduces us to three styles of marketing that people tend to adopt. Do you know your own marketing style? I think these styles tend to line up with personality differences and associated influencing styles. The trap is to copy someone else's style without thinking. Have you ever wanted to "follow" some guru but felt uncomfortable with their marketing approach? Nancy's core message is to stay true to your own marketing style and you will tend to attract the people you want to attract. If you mindlessly adopt the marketing style of someone else, you can easily deter your own target audience. This is particularly true for marketers offering coaching or consulting but has general application across the board.

Social Bookmarking: Marketing Small Business through RedGage | Small Business Odyssey

You are here: Home / social bookmarking / RedGage: Social Bookmarking with a Difference

RedGage: Social Bookmarking with a Difference

October 14, 2011 By Ron Passfield Leave a Comment

 

Social Bookmarking is designed to create online bookmarks that store information about your small business.

Sites that provide social bookmarking often have a high Page Rank with Google so information bookmarked on these sites can provide quality backlinks to your own small business website/blog.  This, in turn, increases the value of your own site in the “eyes” of Google.

RedGage is a social bookmarking site with a difference:

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

RedGage offers social bookmarking in the form of images, videos, links and a unique blogging platform. One of the distinct advantages of this social bookmarking site is that it encourages cross-posting - using various forms of bookmarking to promote the one article or blog post.

Posterous Alexa Ranking and Demogrpahics

      I was just checking the Alexa ranking for Posterous this morning and found the following information:

 

Traffic ranking globally:       506

Traffic ranking US              453

Traffic ranking UK              349

 

Compared to the general Internet population, the site appeals to people who have graduate education, browse from work and have no children.  Additionally, age groups 25-34 and 35-44 are over-represented on Posterous and over 65's are greatly under-represented.

 

Ron Passfield

Brisbane Australia

How to Create Quality Backlinks for Small Business Websites | Small Business Odyssey

Backlinks: To Buy or Not to Buy, That is the Question!

October 15, 2011 By Ron Passfield 1 Comment

 

Backlinks are one of the core measures that Google uses to evaluate a small business website/blog and determine where the site will appear in search engine results. 

Unfortunately, many small business owners have been convinced by some Internet marketers to buy links to build up the ranking of their websites.

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

Internet marketers are reporting that Google is on the warpath over artificially created backlinks. Some websites have been sandboxed by Google where the owners have bought numerous links, others have been removed from the search engine results (SERPs). This post discusses the issues.

smallbusinessodyssey.com - Part 2

Social Media: Where Are Your Customers Conversing?

By Ron Passfield on Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 | No Comments

 

With the growth of social media, small business owners face new challenges in terms of locating their clients/customers.  Added to this is the fact that recent estimates show that 80% of people who have access to the Internet start their search via the Web, not via printed media (e.g. Yellow Pages or newspapers).

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

Discusses the importance of knowing what social media your small business customers are using and knowing how to locate them and connect with them. The blog post stresses the importance of participating in the online conversation.

Turn Photos into Animated Music Videos

Turn Photos into Video to Promote Your Small Business

By Ron Passfield on Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 | 1 Comment

 

One of the easiest ways to market your small business is to turn your photos into video.  You must have lots of photos lying around that you can use for this purpose.  However, if you want to make the most of this highly effective marketing option, you can be more deliberate about what photos you take and the videos you create.

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

Here I discuss how to use Animoto to turn your photos into videos for the purpose of business marketing. The steps are simple but the results can be quite stunning:
http://animoto.com/?ref=tzolcekr

Check Your Business Listing in Local Business Directories | smallbusinessodyssey.com

Are Your Listings in Local Business Directories Accurate?

by Ron Passfield on Monday, October 10th, 2011 | No Comments

I was checking the search results for my business name, Merit Solutions Australia, in Google and was surprised with the results from local business directories.

A lot of the entries in the first two pages of Google results were listings from local business directories.

These directories create business listings (much like Google and Facebook have done recently) by scraping content from the Internet.  The only problem with the local business directories, as I found, is that a lot of the information is incorrect (because it is out of date).

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

While it is great to have your small business automatically listed on Local Business Directories, one of the problems is that the information is often inaccurate and this can be a real problem when people are searching on your business name. This blog post looks at the impact of the local business listings and what to do about them.

smallbusinessodyssey.com - Part 2

Small Business Marketing: A Personal Odyssey

By Ron Passfield on Sunday, October 9th, 2011 | No Comments

Human Resource Consultancy

Our small business was created in 1996 and following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008, we found that we had to become actively engaged in online small business marketing.

Up until the GFC, our gross income had been growing at around 20% per year and we did not have to actively market our small business.  Most business arrived by word of mouth through the professional services provided by our HR consultants.

However, with the GFC, our business income dropped by 50% in six months.  So we had to look at ways to improve the income from our small business.

via smallbusinessodyssey.com

This is the post that launched my new blog, http://www.smallbusinessodyssey.com

I am sharing my journey into online marketing of my offline small business. I'll share the strategies and tactics I use in day-to-day marketing of our business:
http://www.meritsolutions.com.au

YouTube - Nicholas Christakis: The hidden influence of social networks

Nicholas Christakis: The hidden influence of social networks

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Social networks shape our thinking, our lives and our actions. They are arenas of influence.

Nicholas Christakis in this video presentation shows how social networks can explain the growth of philanthropy, obesity and drug use.

His visual presentation of the forming and re-forming of a social network over 15 years is stimulating and enlightening. It will change your perspective of social networks and their power for creating good in the world.

Nicholas maintains that social networking is embedded in our genes and that one only has to look at our offline social networks to confirm this.

The question for us as business owners and online marketers is. "How are we going to use these arenas of influence?" Will the world be a better place as a result of our actions on Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, RedGage and other social networking sites?

Strategic Plan Document | Don Crowther

Here’s a link to the Two Page Strategic Plan Template
It’s a zip file that contains the template and a sample of it filled out for a fictitious business in both a Microsoft Word document and in PDF format in case you don’t have Word.

And here’s a video that describes how to do fill it out.

The key here is that it’s not the form that makes the difference, it’s the thought behind it. So, I recommend that you plan on spending at least 2-3 hours in a quiet room, with no distractions to think about the elements asked for in this form.

via doncrowther.com

Don Crowther does it again with this excellent tool for developing your own strategic plan - 2 Page Strategic Plan

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Ron Passfield, PhD, Giant Squid100 and creator of the SquidooRoo Training Program in social media marketing.

How To Research Facebook To Find Profitable Topics - Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Press the PLAY button on the video below to begin watching.

Text Transcript of Video

• Download the text transcript [ PDF ]

via entrepreneurs-journey.com

In the video you see one way to gather live feedback from real people about potential topics and also gauge how popular topics could be. The video above helps with Milestone One (Topic Selection) from the The Roadmap to Become A Blogger:
http://www.becomeablogger.com/roadmap/

Visit the SquidooRoo Program for focused training in social media marketing:
http://www.squidooroo.com

9 Traits of Successful Marketers (Pt 2) - Get Rich Click With ClickBank

9 Traits of Successful Internet Marketers (Part 2)

As promised, 5 more traits of successful marketers from Neil Hartley and Dush Ramachandran’s presentation at the Internet Marketing Party – a gathering of like-minded Internet marketing entrepreneurs and marketing professionals held the second Tuesday of every month in Austin, TX and run by Dave Gonzalez.

• They take action. Inevitably, we all face tasks we would rather put off for another day. Successful Internet marketers understand that getting those tasks done now can translate into more sales today AND tomorrow. Procrastination can, and will, prevent you from becoming successful.

via getrichclick.com

Some list building insights from Clickbank executives along with 5 traits of successful Internet marketers. The list of traits is a good basis for reflecting on your own Internet marketing. The five traits discussed are - take action, believe in yourself, don't be afraid of competition, pursue multiple revenue streams, invest in your own skill and knowledge building.

SEO for Wordpress Blogs

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