Your Small Business Toolbox - More Value For Less Cost » Grow Your Website

Get Globally Recognized In Half The Time

Tonya R. Taylor — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:02:01 +0000

When it comes to marketing your small business online the one question I get asked the most is “How to increase web traffic?” Well for starters, you need a “Checklist to bring more traffic to your blog or website” and “You Are Invited” to easily attract more customers. Both of these are articles I have written to provide solutions to help you build a bigger more profitable business online.

These articles explain the benefits of leaving comments, writing guest blog post and answering or asking questions in forums to increase your web traffic. The more of these you do the more likely you will attract more visitors. And as an added bonus this increased visibility will help propel you to expert status in your industry. Remember that old saying a picture is worth a thousand words?

It’s true!

You want people in your industry to know it’s you by recognizing your name as well as your picture. But will they?

Not if you don’t have one. Have you ever seen that snowflake looking image next to someone’s name and comment? I’m sure you have and I’m sure they probably don’t know what I am going to tell you.

What’s worse… what happens when you have left hundreds of these along with your picture then need to change it?

Good question!

I have the answer.

You need a Gravatar.

A Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar. Basically it is a picture that follows you around the internet which is linked to your email. Don’t worry the account won’t cost you a cent and signing up is easy. All they need is your email to send you a confirmation password.

That’s It!

Over the years I have left hundreds if not thousands of comments, blog posts and forum questions. So it doesn’t matter if you have old comments or are ready to write some new ones. You can still create a Gravatar. In fact, so many it would be a daunting task to remember them all.

You may have noticed phase 1 of my rebranding efforts in action, which has caused this very issue for me. Then I remembered I can easily swop the old picture with the new picture using my Gravatar.

Sidebar: Have you seen my new look on Twitter @RisingStarIdeas, my Facebook profile and on Linkedin (I know, I know this blog picture is long overdue I’m working on that next)?

Just in case you have a need for more than one picture they have you covered. Say you need a professional picture and a fun picture you can have multiple emails with a different picture (or the same) tied to each one. You can add additional information to your public profile that includes your contact info, your social media sites and a detailed bio with additional links. They even provide you a link directly to your profile so you can always keep your about me details up to date (here’s mine http://gravatar.com/talk2rsi).

If you don’t want to end up with several different pictures you can’t change (or that awful snowflake!) scattered across the internet make sure to get a Gravatar. Want to see your Gravatar in action NOW? Leave a comment below your Gravatar will appear beside it.

Copyright © 2010 Rising Star Ideas, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Tonya R. Taylor, Your Savvy Online Business Builder, is dedicated to helping you learn how to use the internet to build a bigger more profitable business. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter Building Blocks to get how-to articles, tips and resources so you can Spend Less and Make More.

If you liked today's article check out these related articles:

You Are Invited

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Small Business: Improve Your Website No Webmaster Needed

Small Business: Improve Your Website No Webmaster Needed

Tonya R. Taylor — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:37:14 +0000

On Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending the #SmallBizChat hosted by Malinda Emerson affectionately known on Twitter as @SmallBizLady. #SmallBizChat is a weekly fast-paced talk show on Twitter for Small Business Owners. @SmallBizLady conducts the interview by typing questions to the guest via Twitter. The participants can chime in with additional questions or comments too. You can learn more about upcoming shows and how to participate here.

Anyway, this week’s guest was @RaymonRay a technology evangelist from smallbiztechnology.com; ; a former tech consultant; hands on tech expert; frequent speaker including Inc. 500 and SmallBizTrends; a frequent writer of more than 7,000+ blog posts; and is frequently quoted in the media – including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and beyond. The topic for the #SmallBizChat was “How to Improve your Small Business Website”.

This was one of the most active TwitterChat’s I have participated in. The tweets were coming by so fast at times; it was hard to keep up. Little did I know (or had realized) I was so passionate about this topic.

I had written a few articles with tips, tricks, do’s, don’ts and reviews on various ways to grow your website. Here is my collection of articles jam-packed with little known ways to improve your small business website without contacting or paying your webmaster:

How To Automatically Improve Your Website And Marketing ROI - Do you know who is visiting your website? When was the last time you checked your website statistics? Do you want to improve your website and marketing ROI? Want the answer? Keep reading…

Checklist to bring more traffic to your blog or website – Are you worried about the economy? Who isn’t! In today’s tough economic times small businesses owners need to find and/or create innovative ways to earn more money. I guess that’s why I am constantly asked “What can I do to drive more traffic to my blog or website?” In an economy that has been so challenging, it’s nice to be reminded there are free and low cost resources available to help grow your business.

Is your website ready for the Smartphone faceoff? – Major brands and small business owners are quickly attempting to create a mobile version of their website or blog. And you should too! Here are 3 no charge ways to make your website Smartphone ready.

10 things I HATE about visiting your website – Small business owners don’t waste money and time building a website that emphasizes the bells and whistles. This type of website rarely generates leads or creates new sales because they frustrate and confuse visitors.

3 tools to make your website or blog social media friendly – Want to make it easy for visitors to share your content on Twitter, Facebook, email or one of the many social bookmarking sites?
Don’t worry if you have not or afraid to jump on the social media bandwagon you do not need a Twitter or Facebook account to use these tools on your website or blog.

Do you want to improve your website? Have a question or a comment? Let me know below.

Copyright © 2010 Rising Star Ideas, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Tonya R. Taylor, Your Savvy Online Business Builder, is dedicated to helping you learn how to use the internet to build a bigger more profitable business. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter Building Blocks to get how-to articles, tips and resources so you can Spend Less and Make More.

If you liked today's article check out these related articles:
How To Automatically Improve Your Website And Marketing ROI

How to create a website Your visitors will LOVE

You Are Invited

How To Automatically Improve Your Website And Marketing ROI

Tonya R. Taylor — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:31:11 +0000

Small business owners: do you want to improve your website and marketing ROI?

Easy!

Monitor your website or blog analytics data. Do you know who is visiting your website? When was the last time you checked your website statistics? Do you want to improve your website and marketing ROI? Want the answer? Keep reading…

Every week I review my website stats to find out what marketing efforts are working and what’s not. I need to know what keywords people are using to find me, how long they are staying on the site and which articles they are reading.

I am a contributor to Boomer-Living for the Boomer Entrepreneur and Baltimore’s Social Media Examiner for the Examiner.com as well as a frequent guest blogger for other websites and eNewsletters. So it’s important for me to know where the traffic to my website is coming from.

To get this data I use Google Analytics because they provide some of the best statics for gathering the data I need in an organized way. I know I have a ton of things going on in my business and personal like as I’m sure you do too. So I know it may be hard to remember to routinely login in to your Google account to check you stats, but you should often.

Here are 3 ways to automatically receive your stats without every logging into Google Analytics:

1. Email Reports – create a custom report with the details you want to track. Schedule your reports to be emailed each morning, on Monday’s, the first day of the month or the first quarter of each month. Your analytics report can be sent in common formats such as PDF, CSV, or Excel. And as an added benefit they can be emailed to more than one person.

2. Receive Intelligence Alerts – Intelligence Alerts automatically monitor the traffic on your website. These alerts are built in to Google so you don’t have to do anything extra except check the “enable automatic alerts” button. You can create custom alerts to monitor traffic spikes, conversion rates, specific campaigns and so much more. The alerts can be emailed immediately when its triggered, each day, week or month.

3. Download Outlook App – If you are still one to use Outlook (I am) you can download a free app created by Red Critter. Their Analytics App provides statistics such as number of visits, page views, pages per visit, bounce rate, average time on site and percent of new visits for configurable date ranges. RedCritter works inside Outlook in its own window gathering information.

Sidebar: If you are an avid Outlook user take a long look at Red Critter’s App Gallery. Lots of cool stuff there for you to have fun playing with.

Do you know who is visiting your website? When was the last time you checked your website statistics? Let me know in the comments below. If you like this article, click the retweet button or like button.

Photo courtesy: microsoft.com

Copyright © 2010 Rising Star Ideas, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Tonya R. Taylor, Your Savvy Online Business Builder, is dedicated to helping you learn how to use the internet to build a bigger more profitable business. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter Building Blocks to get how-to articles, tips and resources so you can Spend Less and Make More.

If you liked today's article check out these related articles:
Search engine marketing: A little known way to gain an edge

Article Marketing! Yes, it really works!

3 tools to make your website or blog social media friendly

Checklist to bring more traffic to your blog or website

Tonya R. Taylor — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 05:07:13 +0000

Are you worried about the economy? Who isn’t! In today’s tough economic times small businesses owners need to find and/or create innovative ways to earn more money. I guess that’s why I am constantly asked “What can I do to drive more traffic to my blog or website?” In an economy that has been so challenging, it’s nice to be reminded there are free and low cost resources available to help grow your business.

Check out this traffic generating checklist full of FREE resources:

1.    Analyze website traffic
In the old days, you could use a basic hit (also known as a web) counter to measure visitors. Fortunately, those days are long gone! The analytics tools today are far more sophisticated, easy to understand and best of all FREE.

If you are serious about driving traffic to your site and not using Google Analytics, well, you should be! Once you understand the power of this tool you will make profit-generating improvements to your advertising which will drive more traffic to your website.

Review search keywords visitors use to find your site

Review what geographical area visitors come from

Review referring sites

2.    Leave comments
Leaving comments is a cheap form of advertising without blatantly shouting your sales pitch. This basic effective strategy is often overlooked because many entrepreneurs just don’t understand the power. Leaving comments builds a relationship, shows that you care and want to share your opinion with others.

Engage other commenter’s by asking and answering thought provoking questions. Bloggers reward commenter’s with “dofollow” links which boosts your website rank in search engines. Best of all leaving comments on popular blogs in your industry is the best way to be known around the Internet.

Be the first to comment because they are most often read

Make it easy for your visitors to comment with ShareThis

Get backlinks

3.    Write articles
Whether you are a beginner or an expert to article marketing this strategy will get you backlinks that improve your search engine PageRank. There are literally hundreds of article marketing sites to choose from. However there is one feature rich FREE article marketing site that stands out, EzineArticles.com. Your articles will be sent to over 400+ niche email alerts indicating new articles are available that match their unique interests.

Use archives for past newsletters, blog post, comments from forums or blogs

Only use original content you wrote

Create articles between 400-750 words

4.    Use social bookmarking
According to Wikipedia, social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata. Social bookmarking is the perfect way to let the world know about your site. Sharing your links will get you increased content distribution and more backlinks. Because social bookmarking sites have an enormous amount of monthly visitors and extremely high page rank your links will benefit.

Bookmark your comments

Bookmark your articles and those of others

Make it easy for your visitors to bookmark your website or blog with ShareThis

Using this checklist will keep you from staying awake at night thinking about how you can attract more traffic to your website. Start reaping the benefits today.

Copyright © 2010 Rising Star Ideas, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Tonya R. Taylor, Your Savvy Online Business Builder, is dedicated to helping you learn how to use the internet to build a bigger more profitable business. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter Building Blocks to get how-to articles, tips and resources so you can Spend Less and Make More.

If you liked today's article check out these related articles:
Remarkable Results!

3 tools to make your website or blog social media friendly

You Are Invited

Search engine marketing: A little known way to gain an edge

Tonya R. Taylor — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 04:03:05 +0000

What do you do when you want to find information?

These days not many people turn to the yellow pages to find information on a business. So what do they do when they want to find a business, service or any other type of information? Google it!

That’s right.

Google has made it easy for your business to get a free page and get found locally.

Yes, free!

Do you know about Google Places?

In September 2009, Google changed the name from Local Business Center to Google Places. Along with this new name came powerful easy-to-use tools to manage your own business information directly on Google.

Google Places is a free online business page kind of like a yellow page listing only much, much better. With your Google Places you reach millions because your business listing will be found on both Google.com and Google maps. In fact, you can edit your listing any time of day or night; add photos, videos and coupons.

What an opportunity!

I’m sure you have seen these pages show up for restaurants, retail shops and local hotspots. Don’t worry. The good news, it does not matter if you have a store front or not you can get found locally by claiming your Google Places page.

All you need to do is follow these three simple steps:

Submit your information, from basic contact info to photos and video.

Verify your listing by phone or postcard.

Wait for your listing to appear on Google. (no more than 12 hours according to Google)

You are required to supply a physical address and phone number. Remember your location will show up on Google Maps therefore it is not recommended to use your home address. You can choose to display or not display your address on the map and on your places page.

Google places provide dashboard with a wealth of information and statistics. Much like Google Analytics the statistics show how many times users saw your business listing as a local search result. You also get stats on how many times users click on more info on the map, driving directions and click to your website.

Promote your business with Google

Flat rate advertising

They have an unbelievable offer that’s a flat fee of $25 a month which you can cancel anytime. At that price you can try it out to see what kind of results you can get. Google Tags is a unique feature that lets you advertise your business on the Google Map when local searches are made. Your business stands out because the searcher will see a yellow marker with scissors.

Printed or mobile coupons

I love this feature! Create and update the coupon yourself. You can even add an image, expiration date and coupon code. They give you the option to have your coupon printed or formatted for display on a mobile phone.

As of April 2010, four million businesses claimed their Place Page on Google, have you? Claim yours now.

Copyright © 2010 Rising Star Ideas, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Tonya R. Taylor, Your Savvy Online Business Builder, is dedicated to helping you learn how to use the internet to build a bigger more profitable business. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter Building Blocks to get how-to articles, tips and resources so you can Spend Less and Make More.

If you liked today's article check out these related articles:
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Is your website ready for the Smartphone faceoff?

Tonya R. Taylor — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:03:51 +0000

Have you ever taken a look at a website or blog on your mobile phone?

I know I have.

I find myself more and more scanning websites from links I find on Twitter while waiting in a long lines (especially at the grocery story). Or as a quicker way to access information without the hassle of lugging my laptop around.

Curious how my blog would display on my somewhat older phone, a Motorola Q, I pulled it up and was not happy with the results. The page was very slow to load, it did not display properly and I could not click on some of the links. Since then, I have been on a mission trying to figure out how to make my blog mobile phone friendly.

I’m not the only one; major brands and small business owners are quickly attempting to create a mobile version of their website or blog. I have read a few marketing articles indicating consumers are connecting to their favorite brands via mobile devices more than ever before. In fact, according to an article posted on Mashable.com a “New Study Shows the Mobile Web Will Rule by 2015”.

Here are 3 no charge ways to make your website Smartphone ready (Yes, that includes the iPhone and Adroid too!):

1. Use your RSS feed

Mippin – Use your website or RSS feed URL and some simple customization you can make your site available on over 2000 phones worldwide.

Mippin will make your slow website easily mobile ready. Works on any phone and guarantees all sites will be displayed perfectly.

They even provide a mobile phone emulator so you can see how your site will look in advance of going live.

2. Use PHP code

Though this option is only four steps you need to be an advanced user who understands PHP and .htaccess. Otherwise have your web developer complete this hoption for you.

3. Use a Wordpress Plugin

If you are using Wordpress for your website or blog consider yourself lucky! The good news, the plugins directory has 174 choices when you search using the word “mobile”. The bad news, many of this plugins have not been updated in months and only work on the iPhone or the Android.

I chose the WordPress Mobile Pack plugin because it was recently updated, it works with several of the most popular phones and you it will shrink you current theme to fit a mobile phone.

There are a few kinks I need to work out but so far it appears to be working. Take a look on your phone, tell me know how it looks.

Is your website or blog ready for the Smartphone mobile web faceoff? Let me know in the comments below.

Photo courtesy flickr: Closari

Copyright © 2010 Rising Star Ideas, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Tonya R. Taylor, Your Savvy Online Business Builder, is dedicated to helping you learn how to use the internet to build a bigger more profitable business. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter Building Blocks to get how-to articles, tips and resources so you can Spend Less and Make More.

If you liked today's article check out these related articles:
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3 tools to make your website or blog social media friendly

10 things I HATE about visiting your website

Tonya R. Taylor — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 04:05:18 +0000

Small business owners don’t waste money and time building a website that emphasizes the bells and whistles. This type of website rarely generates leads or creates new sales because they frustrate and confuse visitors.

If visitors find it hard to navigate your website, locate information or find it worthless they will quickly click away to your competitor’s website. So just keep it simple.

Yes, it’s 2010 and unfortunately business owners are still using these outdated techniques.

Here are 10 things I HATE about visiting your website:

1. Flash intros – are only interesting (maybe) the first time you visit a site. Avoid using heavy flash intros because surveys show 80 percent of visitors hate them and they hurt your searchengine optimization efforts.

2. Animated GIFs and scrolling text – are a major distraction, especially when they areoverused. Unless an animated GIF or scrolling text complements the information on your page, don’t use them.

3. Distorted pictures – are a dead give-a-way your site was not created professionally.Use a cropping tool to evenly distribute the image dimension or use an image gallery that will automatically crop the images for you during upload.

4. Poor placement of advertisements – are frustrating and annoying. You run the riskof loosing high dollars from selling your products or services to an ad that will probably only generate a few pennies.

5. Outdated content and broken links – are very unprofessional and shows lack ofcommitment. Remember if it’s July you don’t want to continue promoting your June event. Use automatic tools like calendars and RSS feeds to keep you content fresh.

6. Under construction pages – are unnecessary and may cause you to lose business.Create a basic page listing your contact address, phone number, email and add a short paragraph about your products or services then ask the visitor to opt-in to your email list for website updates.

7. Too many choices – are confusing and a confused mind always says no. Limit yourmenu choices between 5 and 7 then make sure your navigation appears in the same spot on every page.

8. Too much content – can overwhelm the visitor because no one wants to read adissertation. Make your website about the visitor by providing them with essential information like the benefits of doing business with you. If needed give them the option to click to learn more.

9. Playing music – is a major annoyance especially when there are no controls to turn it off, mute or lower the volume. Not to mention just because you like the music doesn’t mean your visitor will have the same musical tastes. If there’s not a compelling reason to add music, don’t.

10. Hit counters – are useless because they only track one element of site statistics. Seriously there are plenty of sophisticated, easy to understand and free analytics tools available. You can try Google Analytics or Clicky for a real-time solution.

What are things you hate to find when you visit a website? Let me know in the comments below.

Photo courtesy Flickr: Blakeemrys

Copyright © 2010 Rising Star Ideas, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Tonya R. Taylor, Your Savvy Online Business Builder, is dedicated to helping you learn how to use the internet to build a bigger more profitable business. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter Building Blocks to get how-to articles, tips and resources so you can Spend Less and Make More.

If you liked today's article check out these related articles:
How to create a website Your visitors will LOVE

How To Automatically Improve Your Website And Marketing ROI

The biggest mistake most small business owners make when. . . (and how to avoid it)

3 tools to make your website or blog social media friendly

Tonya R. Taylor — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:40:47 +0000

Courtesy of Flickr by Creativecommoners

I have lost count on how many websites or blogs I visited with really good, useful and informative content. These sites have unfortunately neglected the opportunity to leverage social media as a free way to massively distribute their content.

“According to a report from The Nielsen Company, Americans spent 17% of all their Internet time using social networking sites.”

With that statistic in mind, I am amazed how many websites and blogs are still not sociable.

Let me explain…

The sites I am referring to are built on some of the best blogging and web 2.0 platforms available; like WordPress and TypePad . These website are not your run-of-the mill or fly-by-night sites, they have history, a library of information and wealth of valuable traffic.

So why don’t they make it easy for visitors to share their content on Twitter, Facebook, email or one of the many social bookmarking sites?

Hmmn…

Maybe they don’t know there’s a simple piece of copy and paste code that will

automatically shorten their article title and article link then give them up to date tweet counts.

look at their website to find a relevant article title and article images before their content is shared on Facebook.

create a button for just about every social media and social bookmarking site available (not advised).

Well, just in case you don’t know, here are 3 tools that create simple copy and paste code for you to make your website or blog a more sharable social experience:

TweetMeme Retweet button has built a live count of the number of times your webpage, article or blog post has been tweeted. This button can be; used on web pages and/or blog post, added to your RSS feed, added to your emails or used as a plugin for most of the blogging software.

Facebook Share button you can effortlessly choose the button or a link option then decide if you would like to use a counter and specify where you would like to place it on the button. Adding this button makes it as easy to share content on Facebook as it on Twitter.

AddToAny button helps your visitors share and bookmark your webpages and blog posts and subscribe to your feeds using just about any service. They have also integrates Google Analytics for dynamic reporting on all your social media and social bookmarking sites on one report.

For those who have not or afraid to jump on the social media bandwagon you do not need a Twitter or Facebook account to use these buttons on your website or blog. You can find an example of these buttons at the end of this (and every one) of my articles.

Don’t miss out on your opportunity to use social media to increase your traffic and broadcast your message.

BOTTOM LINE

I love to share and others do too.

Have you found great content you wanted to share, but the website didn’t make it easy for you? Please share your story leave a response below.

Copyright © 2010 Rising Star Ideas, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Tonya R. Taylor, Your Savvy Online Business Builder, is dedicated to helping you learn how to use the internet to build a bigger more profitable business. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter Building Blocks to get how-to articles, tips and resources so you can Spend Less and Make More.

P.S. Are you still saying "I don’t get Twitter?" Take charge, download my free report guaranteed to reveal why Twitter is a priceless effective business tool for a women owned business, entrepreneur, sales professional, event planner, professional organizer, solo professional and many other small business owners. You’ll get answers to the top "I don’t get Twitter" frequently asked questions (FAQ) on how to get greater results using Twitter for business. You get insider secrets to quickly gain an advantage over those businesses who choose to ignore Twitter without spending a ton of money advertising and marketing.

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Remarkable Results!

2010 Business Resolution: Save money – use free tools

Tonya R. Taylor — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:48:53 +0000

Believe it or not we are only one week into the new year and people have already started breaking their resolutions. Have you? Does your list look like this:

lose weight

exercise

drink more water

quit smoking

earlier to bed

drink less

pay off credit cards

phone mom more

etc.

I’m sure at least one of these sound familiar to you, right?

Imagine the overwhelming number of people who put “lose weight” on their personal resolution list to do this year, last year and even the year before. SMH (for those who don’t know this is short hand for “shaking my head”) because I too am one of those people.

Now imagine, the number of business owners who have put “grow my business” on that same type of list. Both business and personal resolutions fail because they are not focused, too broad and/or don’t have a plan.

Check out these 5 specific and measurable ways you can use free tools today to save money and grow your business. Repeat after me…In 2010 I resolve to:

1. Learn how to rake in more cash using an Opt-In email list – with a free eCourse

Email marketing is still an extremely effective way to get folks to take action. This free eCourse will teach you 21 simple things you can do to immediately increase your traffic, responses, sales and profits. Some of these tips teach you how to get more people to open your email; others teach you how to get more people to read your email; and still other tips teach you how to get more people to take action.

2. Increase my revenue while I sleep – with Paypal

Let your customers pay for your products or services online, anytime, anywhere. According to Paypal small-to-medium-sized businesses that use their service get an average sales lift of 14%. There are no monthly fees, set-up fees or cancellation fees; however there are (small) per transaction fees. You can automatically add customers to your email marketing (with MailChimp see #5) list instantly and seamlessly whenever they buy from you.

3. Track my website visitors and Twitter followers – with Clicky Analytics

Know who your visitors are, where they are visiting from and what pages they view on your website. See your Twitter growth stats in one location with your traffic data. Clicky Analytics makes it easy to improve your results online with real-time analytics. With this information you will write better content, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and turn visitors into customers.

4. Save money on conference calls – with FreeConference.com

Reduce or eliminate the expensive of hosting conference calls. When using toll-free numbers the conference organizer will (usually) pay a per minute rate for each participant in the conference. With Free Conference long distance rates are charged to each individual conference participant’s by their long distance carrier. Conference calls take place on regular telephone lines and no computer or Internet access is required.

5. Turbo-charge my email marketing campaigns – with Mailchimp

Even if you already have an email marketing tool, I’ll bet you don’t have functionality like MailChimp. Creating stunning email marketing campaigns and autoresponders is just the beginning. MailChimp lets you share your email campaign across social networks Twitter and Facebook. MailChimp can automatically tweet your campaign the moment it is sent. They will even track how many times your campaign was re-tweeted and let you know who’s doing the re-tweeting. With their cool Facebook feature you can post your newsletter to your news feeds with one-click.

By creating specific and measurable goals for your business this year doesn’t have to be like previous years. Implementing these free tools today will help you, repeat after me “I resolve to WIN in 2010″. Make this the year you succeed in accomplishing your business (and personal) resolutions.

Copyright © 2010 Rising Star Ideas, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Tonya R. Taylor, Your Savvy Online Business Builder, is dedicated to helping you learn how to use the internet to build a bigger more profitable business. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter Building Blocks to get how-to articles, tips and resources so you can Spend Less and Make More.

P.S. Are you still saying "I don’t get Twitter?" Take charge, download my free report guaranteed to reveal why Twitter is a priceless effective business tool for a women owned business, entrepreneur, sales professional, event planner, professional organizer, solo professional and many other small business owners. You’ll get answers to the top "I don’t get Twitter" frequently asked questions (FAQ) on how to get greater results using Twitter for business. You get insider secrets to quickly gain an advantage over those businesses who choose to ignore Twitter without spending a ton of money advertising and marketing.

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Grow your business on YouTube, Facebook & Twitter

Tonya R. Taylor — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:07:29 +0000

Did you know YouTube replaced Yahoo as the number two search engine?

Check out this excerpt from the New York Times:

“And now YouTube, conceived as a video hosting and sharing site, has become a bona fide search tool. Searches on it in the United States recently edged out those on Yahoo, which had long been the No. 2 search engine, behind Google. Google, incidentally, owns YouTube. In November, Americans conducted nearly 2.8 billion searches on YouTube, about 200 million more than on Yahoo, according to comScore.”

I have discovered one simple tool to easily (honestly it can’t get any easier than this!) create professional video for you to grow your business on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and more.

Introducing…Animoto, a web application that, with the click of a button, produces videos using images and music that a user selects. Animoto videos have the emotional impact of a movie trailer and the visual energy of a music video.

If you’re ready to easily create professional video for your business, there are some important things you need to know before you begin. Just follow these three tips you’ll be making videos in less than a minute to market your business:

An important factor when you start to create your professional video is making sure you narrate your pictures with text to tell a story. Adding text is a great way to engage potential customer/clients. This is important because facts tell but stories sell.

Another important consideration for your video is adding a link to your website within the Animoto. You get the option to include a “Call to Action” Button that will show up at the conclusion of your video. Using this feature is critical to increase your brand awareness and drive potential customer/clients directly to your site with a single click.

Have you considered creating podcast for iPods & iPhones? You can use Animoto to produce video podcasts that clients could easily play on their video iPods and share with friends. With this tool it’s not as difficult as you might think.

Follow these three tips to use Animoto to increase sales and enhance your business. Here are a few ways to grow your business with Animoto:

Post a promotional video to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc to increase exposure.

Create a video ad to advertise through Google Video or on Vimeo.

Use video to pitch ideas to joint venture partners, customers and or clients.

Create compelling video content for your website or blog.

Add testimonials or glowing reviews of your work from past customers.

Add video to your e-newsletter and create a marketing tool that your audience will want to read and share.

There are many more ways to grow your business on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc, with Animoto, what’s yours?

Copyright © 2010 Rising Star Ideas, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Tonya R. Taylor, Your Savvy Online Business Builder, is dedicated to helping you learn how to use the internet to build a bigger more profitable business. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter Building Blocks to get how-to articles, tips and resources so you can Spend Less and Make More.

P.S. Are you still saying "I don’t get Twitter?" Take charge, download my free report guaranteed to reveal why Twitter is a priceless effective business tool for a women owned business, entrepreneur, sales professional, event planner, professional organizer, solo professional and many other small business owners. You’ll get answers to the top "I don’t get Twitter" frequently asked questions (FAQ) on how to get greater results using Twitter for business. You get insider secrets to quickly gain an advantage over those businesses who choose to ignore Twitter without spending a ton of money advertising and marketing.

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