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How YouTube Can Benefit Your Small Business

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:11:31 +0000

If you’ve never considered video marketing, you’re missing out on an entire world of opportunity. Providing videos for your customers is a great way to share information while personalizing your business at the same time. One of the difficulties of an Internet business is that you may never meet your customers in person; videos are a great way to make the personal connection that builds customer trust and loyalty. One of the easiest and best ways to use video for your small business is to take advantage of YouTube’s free services.

Why?
You can certainly host videos on your own small business website, but there are some great advantages to hosting your videos on YouTube instead. Here are a few you should consider:

YouTube is the world’s most popular online video community, with millions of users. The site’s features make it easy for users to search and browse by topics, view their friends’ favorite videos, and subscribe to their favorite channels–all things that can attract viewers who have never before heard of your company or your website.
Hosting your own videos takes up your server’s limited storage space and bandwidth. Bandwidth becomes particularly important if you have a terrific video that goes viral. If you host with YouTube, they will be responsible for dealing with the increased traffic load as people flock to see your video, so you won’t have to worry about overloading your own server.

How?
Registering with YouTube and creating your own channel is a simple process, and they have a pretty comprehensive help center if you get stuck. Making your videos doesn’t have to be complicated, either. You need a digital camera, but it doesn’t have to be professional quality–your video will most likely be viewed in a small 320×240 pixel window, so an expensive high-definition camcorder isn’t necessary. Depending on the type of videos you decide to make, your computer’s webcam may be all you need.

Once you have created and uploaded your videos, you can easily embed them in your website and link to them from all over the Internet. Great places to include them might be your social networking profiles, emails, forums, and other Internet video communities.

A few important tips:

Include your business name, website, and other contact info in the video itself as well as in the description.
Keep basic SEO principles in mind when writing your video’s title, description, and tags. Using the right keywords will help customers find you and get your video listed on related searches.
Be an active member of the YouTube community. In addition to posting your own videos, comment on those posted by other users and add ones you like to your favorites.

What?
There are many different types of videos, and you can try whatever approach seems to be the best fit for your business. Here are a few kinds of videos you might consider:

Create a video blog that you regularly update with short videos, usually under 5 minutes long. This isn’t much different than a written blog, but feels more personal and is more interesting for some website viewers. Check out my article on what blogging is for more info on why you should blog–it’s specific to written blogs, but the same principles still apply.
Make demos of your product or services. Customers will feel more confident in the product they’re purchasing if they can see it in action, and they’ll be able to see that you know a lot about the products or services you’re providing.
Offer tutorials or mini-lectures on topics related to your business. Just like with article marketing, these videos will provide your viewers with useful information or skills while also establishing you as an expert in your area. They’re a great opportunity for product placement, as well–for example, if you sell scrapbooking supplies, you can use your products in a how-to-scrapbook video.
Post video answers to frequently asked questions, or even respond to general customer inquiries with video messages.
Provide videos of customer testimonials to prove that the testimonials are authentic and show off your satisfied customers.

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Quick Tip: Create a Newsletter to Stay in Contact with Your Users

admin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:40:02 +0000

Creating a newsletter gives you an opportunity to keep your business name fresh in your users/customers mind. Be sure to let your users know how often you will be sending them your newsletter so you won’t get complaints about SPAM. Keep the newsletter relevant to your company and provide useful information for your readers.

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Quick Tip: Include a Signature in Your Email

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:08:45 +0000

A signature is basically your contact information at the closing of your email message. A signature is a good way to show people how and where you can be reached. Be sure to include your name, phone, website and social media connections if available.

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Can email marketing target a specific geographic location?

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:04:34 +0000

Can email marketing target a specific geographic location?

In one of my previous posts, I talked about how geotargeting – targeting specific geographic areas – can be a great marketing technique for small business owners. I’ve also talked about the importance of email marketing and building an email list from scratch, which isn’t nearly as intimidating as many people think. Many of you have been wondering if there’s a way to put these two marketing techniques together—can you target a specific location using email marketing?

This is a great question, and the answer is yes. You can – and in some cases should – use geotargeting for your email marketing campaigns. There are many email marketing situations where it’s helpful to target specific locations:

If your small business is only set up to serve local customers—for example, a dry cleaner or pet grooming business;
If you sell products that are only useful in certain climates, like winter gear;
If your product is only available in certain areas, or has varying release dates—for example, a clothing line that will be released locally several weeks before it’s available nationwide;
If you sell internationally and want to personalize emails with the appropriate language or pricing structure depending on the country.

These are just a few reasons you might want to target a specific geographic location with your email marketing—you can probably think of a number of other ways email geotargeting can work for you.

How to target a specific geographic location with email marketing

To be geographically specific in your email marketing, you will need to collect your visitors’ location when you collect their email address. There are a couple ways you can do this:

Include a field in your email sign-up form for location. Because having a large number of fields to fill out makes people less likely to sign up, it’s best to keep this short and simple. Asking for a zip code is one of the easiest ways to collect geographic location.
Target email subscribers based on their IP address. IP addresses can be traced back to a geographic location with a large amount of accuracy, providing you with the country, state, and even city of your subscriber. Email marketers like AWeber, the company I use, make it very easy to segment your email list by location using IP addresses.

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Quick Tip: Avoid Having Music that Doesn’t Have a Stop/Start Button

admin — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:04:38 +0000

Unless you’re an entertainment company where having music on a website would seem an obvious, don’t turn away your visitors with your tunes. At the very least don’t have music playing right away when a visitor enters your website. Create a stop/start button where you give the user the option of listening to your music or not. Most people will get turned off when they hear music on a website, specially if they access your website from work.

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Outgoing Links and SEO

admin — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 11:09:50 +0000

If you’ve read my article on SEO, you know that inbound links are one of your greatest allies for boosting your small business website’s search engine results. The power of inbound links to increase search engine rankings makes many website owners worry that including outgoing links on their website will have the opposite effect. In fact, you’ve probably heard or read that outgoing links can hurt your Google PageRank. Actually, outbound links on your webpage can be a great SEO tool and can work with other SEO tips to improve your website’s search engine ranking.

Advantages of Outgoing Links

Linking to high-quality websites places your site in a “good neighborhood” by associating your site with quality. You can think of it just like your real-life neighborhood–if the people living next door renovate their house, your house will go up in value as well. Similarly, if you link to an excellent website, your site’s perceived value will increase.
By taking the time to choose quality links that add value to your website’s content, you show your visitors that you know how to recognize good information and want to be their go-to resource.
Linking to other websites is a natural way to increase your incoming links, by drawing attention to your website and encouraging reciprocation. If your website has useful content, sites you link to will be inclined to return the favor.
Anchor text for outgoing links can be a great place to include your website’s SEO keywords in your content. If it doesn’t make sense to use your keywords in the anchor text, it may be a sign that the outbound link isn’t relevant enough, and you may want to rethink including it.

Watch out for:

Becoming part of a virtual “bad neighborhood” by linking to spammy or low-quality websites. Search engines and visitors will judge your website by the company it keeps, so only link to high-quality, relevant websites.
Including dozens of links to irrelevant sites. Always think about your visitors and only include links that you think they will truly find useful or interesting.
Sending your visitors to websites offering the same services or products. Outgoing links direct your website’s visitors away from your site, so you want to be sure that you’re not sending them to a competitor. Instead, send them to sites that provide something relevant but slightly outside the scope of your own website. For example, if your website sells baby clothes, you may link to a website that’s all about preparing for a new baby–but which doesn’t actually sell baby items. Your visitors will appreciate the useful information and they will return to your site to make their purchases.

Do outgoing links drain your PageRank?

No one knows exactly how Google calculates PageRank, but the general consensus is that including relevant, high-quality outgoing links will do more to help your PageRank than harm it. The only danger comes from linking to websites which have been penalized by Google, are of low quality, or have no relevance to your website.

Outgoing links can be an excellent SEO tool, and you shouldn’t be afraid to include well-chosen links when you think they will add value to your website’s content.

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Summer Giveaway: CRAVE Los Angeles Guidebook

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:38:24 +0000

I’m excited to announce that I, Yiana Palacios am being featured in the Intelligentsia section of the CRAVE Los Angeles 2010 Guidebook and I’m giving one away.

To Enter: Simply fill in the form CRAVEla Guidebook Giveaway

CRAVE Los Angeles 2010 guidebook is filled with businesses and stories of inspiring women owned businesses. From shopping and dinning to business and health this is the ultimate guidebook to the places women CRAVE in Los Angeles.

The Intelligentsia section highlights business-to-business entreprenesses, including coaching, marketing and public relations, photography, business consulting, and design services. I’m one of more than 125 women who are featured in the premier issue of this guidebook.

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Adding Images to Your Website

Quick Tip: Monitor Your Online Reputation

admin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:32:27 +0000

Know who and what is being said about your business online. You can set Google Alerts that will send you an email every time/day someone mentions your business online. This way you can celebrate the glory that’s being said about you or stop misleading information before it spreads.

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Why Doesn’t Your Business Have a Website?

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:12:43 +0000

I find it surprising that some small businesses still don’t have a website. Typically, small business owners who decide not to have a website say something along the lines of, “My business is very small. It’s just me and three employees. I don’t want to sell my products online. Why do I need a website?”

My answer is always the same: regardless of the size of your business, and whether you plan to sell your products online or not, you do need to have an online presence, or you risk losing potential customers. Here are the four main reasons why even the smallest mom and pop shop should have a website:

Make It Easier To Get More Info About Your Business

Even if you don’t plan to sell online, you should have a presence on the Web so that customers, potential employees and business partners can quickly and easily find out more about your business. These days, when people search for information, the first place they go to is the Internet. More and more research shows that in almost every area, the first step in the decision making process is gathering information online. Not having an online presence will make some potential customers assume that you’re not a serious business and look elsewhere.

Your Competitors Are Online

For many prospects, if they have a choice between two businesses, and one business has a strong online presence with lots of info and the other has no website, they will feel more comfortable doing business with the site that has a website. A website makes a business seem modern, up to date and more accessible. A lack of website conveys the opposite – it makes a business look outdated and less professional.

Your Customers Are Online

This is easy. If your customers and prospects are online, you should be online too, and since these days almost everyone is online, regardless of what you sell or who your customers are, you should have an online presence. The same is true for social media, by the way – you don’t need to be on Twitter if your customers are not using Twitter. But if they are, you should have a regularly updated Twitter account and a prominent link to it from your website’s homepage.

Streamline Customer Service

A website is a great way to provide support for your customers and save yourself valuable time. Your website should include as much information about your business as possible, with the goal of minimizing the volume of phone calls you receive and the time spent on answering phone calls and emails. Include your address, directions, store hours, as much information about your products and services as you can, and answers to the most frequently asked questions you receive.

It’s important to realize that it’s not enough to just have a website. You should have a professionally designed site if you want to be taken seriously. A generic, low-quality website could actually hurt your business instead of promoting it, so it’s better to have no website than to have one that makes your business look bad. Small business website design is probably more affordable than you realize. Click here to read more about professional website design for small businesses. [LINK to October’s blog post).

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Quick Tip: Use No More than 3 Keywords Per Web Page

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:07:46 +0000

When writing content for your website be sure that each page focuses on no more than 3 keywords. Choose the keywords that you want to use for that specific page and use just those keywords multiple times on that page (of course keeping in mind that it should read well for your target audience).

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