In 2007, the mention of content marketing brought as many blank stares from small business owners as the mention of a website did 10 years before. In fact, in 1997 when we started our small business magazine in Southwest Florida, few owners had websites, let alone an online marketing strategy. In 2009, most small businesses do have websites and the term, ‘content marketing,’ has gone from obscure How to go from clueless to compelling to transform prospects into buyers When I say fashionable, I mean that the usage of the phrase has skyrocketed

Today I attended Forrester' s Webinar "Defining Your B2B Social Media Strategy" with Vice President and Principal Analyst, Laura Ramos, and Vice President of Tech Industry Consulting, Dan Klein. Anu Venkitaraman, Managing Partner of ReThink Marketing of Addison,TX and I, conducted a private chat discussing why small B2B marketers have embraced social media in a stronger way than their bigger B2B sisters and brothers. The seminar was chock full of interesting facts on social media usage by B2B marketers and by B2B decision-makers. For both B2B vendors and the buyers of those

Small businesses willing to invest some effort should be pleased with the results. Yesterday’s post described one strategy to sell marketing automation to small businesses: provide a specific, turnkey service that requires virtually no skill or effort from the user. Marketing automation vendors entering this market are essentially betting that they can make their systems powerful enough to be useful and easy enough for a small business to run. Summary: Hubspot offers a bundle of Web traffic generation and lead management features in one low-cost package.

Today, let's do a very simple calculation to determine how much cash your social media strategy should be generating to justify its existence. I'll have to make some broad assumptions because every company is different, but you can insert your own numbers and do the math for your own organization ... Let's assume you are a medium-sized company, and have one person working full-time on social media marketing. Even a modest effort at a small company takes a lot of time, which must be funded through the sweat of your manufacturing and sales efforts. The second reason is this: For

It’s particularly gratifying to watch so many small businesses and independent professionals putting content marketing to work. With minimal budgets and maximum creativity, they are executing content marketing strategies that deliver tangible results. They may just inspire you to stop procrastinating and to kick start your content marketing strategy now. This week, several client meetings reinforced a vital truth: Content marketing isn’t an arcane theory taught in expensive graduate schools that only billion dollar companies can use. In fact, great content marketing

Susan's radio audience is mostly small business marketers, so we talked specifically about what small, smart companies can do to become trusted advisers for their customers (and turn prospects into buyers). What types of content can be effective as part of a content marketing strategy? Why delivering valuable information to your Big thanks to my good friend Susan Friedmann, CSP for having me as a guest on her radio talk show, Riches in Niches , this week. As you'll hear, Susan is a real pro and we had a great time chatting about the subject of attracting

The latest research report from Business.com shows that small business owners are still trying to figure out Twitter … but those who do are seeing an advantage. The expansive report covering 1,711 small business decision makers showed that of all the social media channels, Twitter was the least-used. But even that figure may be deceptively high – the survey sample was of business leaders Just 27 percent of the respondents used the micro-blogging site. Translation: This is why you are still getting blank stares when you talk to most small business decision

In case you missed it (as I did), Anita Campbell a few months ago published 137 Twitter Tips: How Small Businesses Get the Most from Twitter , based on input from the readers of Small Business Trends . This report provides a treasure trove of guidance for marketers who seek to increase their brand awareness, credibility and business results using Twitter. The tips are categorized into six sections. Among the recommendations provided, by section: Getting Started Matt McGee provides tools (such as Nearby Tweets and Tweepz ) and methods for finding

Click here for Part 1: Twitter for business: Four breakthrough insights Ben, your company evidently took a very well-thought-out and measured approach to embarking on a social media campaign. of the occasional, peripheral social media participant. This definitely takes time but it’s time well-spent if you REALLY want to understand the potential of social media for your business. This part 2 of my interview with B2B marketing pioneer Dr. Ben Hanna, VP of Business.com.

My friend Nathan Egan recently gave an interview to Business Week describing the imperatives for small business to engage in social media marketing. It's a valuable new extension of traditional business communication. 3) For many small business owners, social media is an excellent way for virtual networking, providing a highly-efficient method for finding new customers and business contacts. Here are some of the highlights: 1) Social media is new but it's not going away. Jump aboard! 2) Your competition is going to be doing it, if they