Marketing

April 27, 2012 - 2:44 am

Also posted at Tomorrows Home Business Community

Trust Is Critical When You Date, Bungee Jump and Sell Online, KickScore Research Shows
Original article at Smallbiz Technology
By Ramon Ray

We all know how important trust is.

Some guy in a clean uniform and a firm handshake approaches you, you feel pretty good. Some creep in a sloppy uniform, tangled hair and blood dripping from a meat knife makes you cringe.

Your web site is no different.

When customers or prospective customers visit your web site they want to feel that they can trust what they are buying (or even just reading) from your web site. The more information you have online about your business the more comfortable shoppers will feel in buying from you. If you are not a brand (an already trusted brand) like Amazon.com, WalMart or some other retailer. You will need to do a LOT to build trust, with each mouse click, with new visitors.

KikScore, a service which provides a reputation score to web sites, in a recent survey, found the following insight from the survey:

With the substantial increase over the last few years in online shopping, consumers have become aware of the constant threat of hackers, scammers, and identity thieves that operate online. Now consumers are increasingly searching for and hiring local service businesses such as contractors, lawyers, plumbers and landscapers. These shoppers and consumers that perform local searches raise growing concerns about the trustworthiness of the businesses that they find online. Increasingly, if shoppers and browsers visit a website and feel that it is not trustworthy, consumers will simply leave and go to another website. According to findings from the KikScore survey, the fear of being defrauded or being a victim of an online scam has led more than 90 percent of consumers that shop online not to complete a transaction.

Shoppers and Browsers Want More Information About Small Businesses

Consumers are increasingly demanding to have access to more information relating to who they are about to buy from or hire. Shoppers and local seachers, now more than ever, seek information about the reputation of an online business, the management team and their track records. These are just some of the key findings in the KikScore Online Trust Survey about shoppers newfound demand for reputational information and tools that provide greater transparency behind a business:

Over 60 percent of website visitors are more likely to buy from a small business website that posts information and details about the management and owners.
87 percent of consumers feel safer buying from websites that feature information about the business behind the website and its financial track record.
More than 90 percent of website visitors that perform local searches are more willing to trust a service business that posts information on their website about their business history and track record.
85 percent of consumers who conduct local searches would be more willing to hire a small business service provider if the business’ website had a trust seal that displays reputational information about the business and management team behind the website.

The Surveys Implications: Small Businesses that Provide Reputational Information Will Sell More

As small businesses operate, sell and serve during the holiday season and beyond, they need to understand the shifting trend to consumers seeking information about online businesses. Therefore, online businesses that provide this reputation information will have a leg up on their competition whether consumers find their websites through local search or other channels. Raj Malik, CEO and Co-Founder of KikScore, said, Small businesses can win the battle of online trust by being more transparent. The path to do so is by displaying more information on a website namely about the business itself along with information about the reputation and track records of the business owners. KikScores recommendation to address this new trend is for small businesses to display information to website visitors about the following items:

Management information for the small business;
Financial history of the business and the managers;
Location information for the business;
Website history and security details;
Information about privacy, customer service, return and other polices;
Actual customer feedback about the small business and services; and
Certifications and awards for the business and management.

The Surveys baseline findings is that an asymmetry of information exists between website visitors and online small businesses. Therefore small businesses that take the actionable steps outlined in the report and utilize the correct tools can directly address this asymmetry that exists with shoppers and local searchers that are seeking products and services online. Small businesses that display important reputational information to website visitors will find themselves conveying a sense of trustworthiness and credibility online which will help yield greater conversions as well.

Community
And here is a community that allows you to grow and for information gathering for people who think outside the box. You will gain valuable information on marketing.

Marketing can happen for you, if you are motivated. Now, this marketing community that is where you can work and gather as much information that you need to succeed. The community name is Tomorrows Home Business Social Community and is located at this address http://tomorrowshomebusiness.ning.com.

In this marketing community, the business entrepreneur will be able to read blogs and watch videos for business, or just for pleasure. With a few RSS feeds coming to the main page, the entrepreneur can even stay informed of what is happening in marketing and around the world. There is something here in this community for everyone.

Groups like the Maniac Marketers come in and post their blogs in the community, giving valuable information for their Health and Wellness businesses. If you would rather watch videos of the TriVita videos, you can do that, too. Or if you just want to hang out and relax, you can do that, too! There are many music videos like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, and Seasick Steve! Or if you want to learn about handcrafts or see the equally oldest Ford antique car, a 1903 Model A Ford, you can do that, too! Or maybe you need an inspirational video clip! There are many choices of inspirational clips, such as Al Pacinos locker room speech in Any Given Sunday, or Mel Gibson as William Wallace motivating the Scottish men men before battle in Braveheart; or Sylvester Stalone as Rocky and how he motivates himself in the boxing ring, or even his inspirational conversation with his son, and who can forget those chants for Rudy in the movie Rudy!

When you become a member of Tomorrow's Home Business Social Community, there is a profile created just for you. You can use the standard set-up on your page. Or you can be as creative as you want to be. For an example check out my profile page at Terry Allisons Profile Page. I use my profile page as a dream-building tool. I have always wanted a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. I have learned to keep this dream in front of me.

A marketing community for people wanting to find out more information on how to market their own work at home business.

Posted by
Terry L. Allison, Sr., #13134349 1 Star
Independent TriVita Affiliate Member
Skype: allisonmarketinggroup
Phone: 859-858-9246
Creator of Tomorrows Home Business Social Community
Automated Marketing
Staying Informed
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Marketing

April 16, 2012 - 2:06 am

Marketing

Also posted at Tomorrows Home Business Community

Learning Lessons in Small Business Leadership
By Small Business Trends
April 16, 2012

Small business leadership is a crucial skill for all entrepreneurs. In fact, better leadership will make you a better entrepreneur on many levels. Leadership is not just a word. It affects your business profitability on many levels. Have a look!

Better Productivity

Cultivating your mobile workforce. The mobile workforce trend is probably here to stay. There are benefits in this trend not only for your employees but also for you if you embrace the concept and what it has to offer. How can a mobile workforce work for your company. More Leadership, Less Management

Avoiding toxic work attitudes. Something as simple as word can change your life, the word should for example. Here are some thoughts about how words and judgements can effect us negatively in our business decisions. How are judgements leveled by others affecting you? The Savvy Copywriter

Better Execution

Captivating your audience. Whether speaking to a group about your business or brand or giving a talk about business in general, your presentation will be critical. How do you improve your presentation skill to make them the best they can be? TweakYourBiz

Understanding ROI. While this post is about social media return on investment, of course, ROI is something to be considered in every part of your business. What to be a success in your business? Focus only on what works and avoid other considerations. Analytical-Solution.com

Better Opportunities

Leading the new vanguard. Crowdsourced companies are a whole new animal. What will leading one really mean. You do not have to wait to find out. Go behind the scenes in this slideshow of a crowdsourced company in action. WSJ

Finding the real opportunity. Def Jam Records founder Russell Simmons covers a variety of topics from leadership to better attitudes toward work in this wide ranging session with other business leaders. One of the key takeaways for entrepreneurs however is to find what is missing. Inc.com

Better Marketing

Avoiding big marketing mistakes. Have you made these? You would not be alone. Understand the importance of changing your mindset and going for the best decisions when coping with a tough economy. Going to extremes will openly hurt your business and is not a good way to handle decisions. Talk Business With Howard

The Three Stooges guide to PR. Or how not to handle PR campaigns from a leadership position. In this post we look at leadership missteps when it comes to managing your marketing and promotion message. EMSI

Better Sustainability

Maintaining great vendor relationships. If you want to know the key to maintaining sustainable business services over time, the key may be in maintaining and nurturing great relationships with the vendors that support your business. Do not simply chase the next big thing. Small Biz Diamonds

Building a future with small business. The following post is definitely NOT an unbiased look at the pros and cons of working for yourself versus working for others. In fact, the post expresses the point of view that starting a business of your own, or at least investing, are the only scalable ways of creating sustainable wealth. Free From Broke

Community
And here is a community that allows you to grow and for information gathering for people who think outside the box. You will gain valuable information on marketing.

A marketing community for people wanting to find out more information on how to market their own work at home business.

Marketing

April 09, 2012 - 9:04 am

Marketing

Also posted at Tomorrows Home Business Community

4 Ways to Overcome Marketing Challenges Forever
Original article at About.com Marketing
By By Laura Lake

For most small business owners, marketing is an overwhelming concept. They need and want marketing solutions that ensure a smooth-running, profitable business yet most do not know where to begin or how to focus their efforts.

The essence of marketing is to understand your customers needs and develop a plan that surrounds those needs. You might be surprised to find out that 90 percent of small businesses do not even have a marketing plan. It is difficult to reach your destination if you do not know where you are going!

Four common marketing challenges that small businesses face include:

Lack of Focus
Poor Execution
Customer Disconnect
Lack of Monitoring and Measuring Results

Community
And here is a community that allows you to grow and for information gathering for people who think outside the box. You will gain valuable information on marketing.

A marketing community for people wanting to find out more information on how to market their own work at home business.

Marketing

April 04, 2012 - 6:17 am

Marketing

Also posted at Tomorrows Home Business Community

5 Advantages Small-Time Bloggers Get, and Lose
Originally posted at Business Insider
By Lisa Barone, Outspoken Media

I received an email the other day from a blogger just getting started. Actually, she has been at it for more than a year and was frustrated that her community and audience were not growing as quickly as she had hoped. She dreams of being a Brogan. Or a Bloggess. Or an Erika. Someone famous enough to have legions of Twitter followers, Facebook fans and adoring commenters. I gave her some tips on how I thought she could increase engagement on her blog, as well as her own branding, but then I also gave her a piece of advice I do not think she was expecting.

I told her to appreciate her smaller community. And to use it. Right now. Because once it grows, she will not be able to get that time or that freedom back.

So many of us think the key to social media success is to grow our audience as large as it can be. And that is one indicator of success for most people. But you want to be growing the right audience, and to do that, it means learning and finding yourself when you are still small and taking advantage of the things that small size gives you.

Below are five advantages bloggers get just starting out that, if they are not careful, they will lose when they bigger.

1. The Ability to Try Stuff and Fail

No one is going to lie to you: It is a nice feeling to hit publish and immediately see 50 new comments sprout up. But most bloggers also miss the days when they could fail as freely as they once could. When they could try out different voices, media types, styles and ideas without having to worry how their audience was going to react and or what the commenters would say. Your community is the most supportive and accepting when it is still young and small and growing. Take advantage of that and learn from it.

Embrace your smaller stature by using these days in your blogs life to be fearless. Blog like no one and everyone is watching all at the same time. Take risks. Try things. Big things. Yeah, you will fail sometimes. But in doing that you will also find your voice, the one that will save your butt time and time again once you get bigger.

2. The Chance To Really Get To Know Your Audience

When there are only 15 people commenting on your blog with any sort of regularity, it gives you a great opportunity to get to know those 15 people. You not only learn their names, but you learn their issues, their trouble spots, the subjects that get them riled up, and maybe even their kids names. You can have email conversations or Google+ hangouts to learn more about them. All of this information helps you to target content toward them which, in the end, will make your blog stronger as it grows. When your RSS numbers begin to explode, it will be difficult to maintain this level of intimacy with the people who stop by your house every day. Have coffee with your community now to help serve them better in the future.

3. Talking to an Audience Who Gets You

One of the best perks of a smaller audience is the ability to talk to people who really understand you. They get your jokes, your sarcasm, and they are interested in all your personal stories. These things do not always convert so well as your audience grows. People become offended. Or they misunderstand. Or you end up spending half your time explaining what you meant to people who now think you are a terrible person for making that kick a puppy joke. Enjoy this time. You will still be able to crack jokes when you are bigger, but you will have a larger responsibility to watch your mouth. Hopefully by then you have crafted your blog persona so you understand what is funny to your type of people and what they will send you nasty tweets about.

4. Your World View Is Not Skewed Yet

I will make tons of friends for saying this, but smaller bloggers are often more in tuned with reality. Or at least, they are more in tuned with their readers reality. They are worried about things like connecting with their audience, trying to do it all, and making sense out of all these social networks that keep popping up. Big-time bloggers are annoyed at their 500 pending Facebook requests, about the ToS of that new social network, and about all their apps not perfectly syncing together. The reason small business owners make really awesome bloggers? Because they share the same world view as the people they are trying to serve. Do your best to hold on to that world view as long as you can.

5. Fewer Distractions

One of those first world problems mentioned above is all the distractions that come with being a popular blogger. The emails from people wanting to pick your brain. The phone calls. The pitches. The discussions that break out you spend your whole day moderating. When you are not dealing with that, it allows you to put 100 percent of your time and your focus on your blog and what you are trying to build there. The big bloggers wish they were you right now. Make them weep by taking advantage of it.

Growing your audience is great and it should be on your list of goals. But before you go chasing those larger waterfalls, realize the opportunity and the benefits that are in front of you right now. You do not need to be big for your blog to be awesome. There is an equal amount of value that comes with having a small audience, sometimes even more value. Instead of wishing you were larger, focus on nurturing that.

Community
And here is a community that allows you to grow and for information gathering for people who think outside the box. You will gain valuable information on marketing.

A marketing community for people wanting to find out more information on how to market their own work at home business.

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No where else will you find "real" leading edge marketing technology like you will receive from Veretekk services. Traffic Portal marketing is one such innovation. People have become desensitized to the massive amount of bulk email and spam that finds it's way to their mailbox each day. After all, who cares if you have 1 million email addresses, if none of the recipients will ever read anything you send to them!

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Veretekk was an early pioneer of search engine optimization (SEO) systems, deploying a range of tools beginning in the mid-1990's that allowed subscribers to generate massive backlinks to their webpages and quickly increase their search engine results page (SERP) rankings. Of course Google wasn't even around back then, and thus a great deal has changed in the world of SEO!

Professional SEO experts know that ultimately you can't trick the system! Black hat techniques are risky at best, and search engine spamming will get you banned more effectively than it will increase your ranking. There are a number of proven techniques (even recommended by Google itself) that true professionals are aware of and focus their activities around which will produce good results through consistent effort over time.

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Search engine spiders gobble it up! Using the Market Manager, it's not unusual to obtain very high search engine rankings in a matter of hours for well selected keywords. This, the result of a sophisticated web of syndicated pages, each publishing RSS feeds that you control and have easily optimized to maximum effect for the keywords you are targeting. Blog templates allow you to further leverage the system and expand the reach of your feeds out on to as many additional websites and domains you may also own.

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Veretekk 2.0 is "the social system" for professional online marketers. As such, it's designed to maximize the community experience and benefits each member receives from being part of it. Veretekk attracts business people of all backgrounds... from the work at home Mom that just started a new business to the seasoned advertising executive. That's because the power and effectiveness of the system is surpassed only by it's ease of use.

Sharing between members has a profound effect. After over 15 years in business, Veretekk has an extremely loyal worldwide customer base that benefits every new member through the wealth of knowledge, feedback, marketing tips, and advice generated by the community. The various social tools built into the community (i.e. Friends, Groups, Videos, Credentials, Walls, etc.) help to leverage the massive knowledge bank represented by Veretekk's subscribers so that each new member can soak up the valuable information at their own rate. But Veretekk is much more than an isolated community...

Veretekk allows you to manage and control ALL of you other various social systems from one place! That's because a wide range (and ever increasing) collection of features are embedded throughout the system that allows for instant publishing to your other social accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and so on. Push button publishing to all other systems allows members to use Veretekk as their central command center for all of their online marketing efforts! Whether it's direct marketing, search engine optimization, lead generation, product branding, or anything else... Veretekk's social integration technology allows you to harness the power of social networking in today's world.

Explode your business with viral growth! Beyond the direct effects of these social tools, the seamless integration with systems like Facebook allow you (and your customers) to share and spread the word about your business, promotions, products, etc. at lightening speed! Veretekk lets you take advantage of the social phenomenons occurring through advancements in systems like Facebook, but at the same time control and track everything specifically from a professional marketer's point of view!

"Evaluation" is the key to consistent improvement and results. Most people recognize that it does no good to generate thousands of leads if your inadvertently running them right off the cliff! Likewise, there's no better way to squander your marketing efforts than not occasionally stopping to evaluate what's working and what's not. Even if your overall end result is good... it can usually be a lot better if you simply make some minor adjustments to further optimize your campaign.

That's where VereTracking comes in... Long before Google Analytics, Veretekk created a very simple but effective visitor tracking bug that is inserted into all of your various traffic portals and webpages. This simple mechanism allows you to closely evaluate the results of your marketing campaigns. What worked? What didn't? Where is the real traffic coming from and what should you focus on to generate even more?

The Code Tracker system takes it a step further... and allows you to place a small snippet of code pretty much anywhere you want - your own websites, into marketing emails, etc. and funnel the statistics all back to your VereTracking system for analysis. Unlike more robust and heavier systems, the VereTracking code does not delay page load time or otherwise interrupt the functionality on your sites.

The possibilities are endless. Veretekk's web analytics technology is designed to be very simple, yet powerful. This also makes it extremely portable for use in pretty much any application you can imagine. While it's embedded as part of your Veretekk portals and websites, by using it in other systems and services outside of Veretekk you're able to manage the results of everything you do... all from one place!

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You are NEVER alone at Veretekk! This thriving community of professional online marketers includes a never ending pool of resources that stands ready and able to assist you. Whether you have a general marketing question or something more specific, you'll find no shortage of "real people" available 24 hours and day, 7 days a week to help you out. Why? Because Veretekk is the real deal. And that attracts serious minded professionals.

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The VereConference rooms are built to impress... And based on member feedback, they do just that! Each state of the art conference room features live VoIP voice communication, text chat, whiteboard illustration, screen casting, synchronized browsing, and more... All of this, developed for the express purpose of sharing valued professional marketing information amongst members.

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Veretekk is all about "Spam free" marketing. For years as other systems used a single email verification process, Veretekk went further to employ a double-opt in model that prevented 100% of false submissions from ever getting on a member's email list. Furthermore, Veretekk is the only provider of permission based email marketing services that provides the public a simple email lookup tool that lists the date/time and IP address of each submission to the system from that account... along with local and global opt-out functions to prevent abuse.

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VereMail verification systems. There are, however, a range of applications for which bulk emailing still applies. For example, uploading an email list of your existing customers (that have already granted permission to receive your email), or simply sending out your company newsletter to people that have signed up to receive it. Veretekk provides a full featured email publishing system, including an intuitive HTML editor for designing professional email templates. Each email you send out also gets published on its own URL, which can be used for SEO campaigns or simply archive purposes.

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Web hosts are all the same... When it comes to web hosting... the service has become a true commodity... meaning, pretty much all web reputable hosting services are the same. There may be small differences in the options and functionality available to you based on the management software each service makes available to you... and some hosts bundle other functions like domain registration and/or simple website templates... but when it comes down to it the main difference between web hosts is just price.

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But perhaps the greatest benefit of all is the Veretekk community itself. Unlike any other web host, with Veretekk there is a huge community of other members that can help you with most any question related to hosting. Whether you simply need to set up a new domain, or have a more advanced question about how to make a cron script run... or get your VereBlog feed posting into your phpBB forums... there are many others that have already walked those steps and can help out. Just imagine a virtually limitless pool of resources to answer your hosting questions... and you'll begin to understand how VereHosting is different!


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