How to Turn Your Best Customers Into Brand Advocates

Customer relationship management vector

Small business budgets can be, well, small. Whether you’re in the beginning phases of a new business or are an established entity, budgets are tight and every penny is allocated to a specific function. When it comes to marketing budgets, they are often non-existent. Yet, marketing continues to scale the ladder of importance when it comes to small business operations.

The real question, then, is how does a small business integrate marketing efforts with minimal budget? One practically free means of marketing is to enlist your current customers as unofficial brand advocates. Tapping into your captive and loyal consumer base offers your business endless opportunities to increase brand awareness for minimal spend.

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Home Office Hacks for a More Productive Work Day

home office hacks

After weeks of begging, you’ve convinced your boss to let you work from home. Remote working! It’s the dream, right? As a freelance writer and remote worker myself, I can tell you that the rumors are all true: working from home is the best. I can work while the laundry’s going. I can take the dog for a walk whenever he needs to go. I can pace around when I’m mulling over an idea or a turn of phrase without disturbing anyone. I can work whenever I feel most productive, whether that’s at 9:00 a.m. sharp, or at two in the morning when inspiration suddenly strikes out of the blue.

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How to Incorporate Visual Content into Your Marketing Strategy

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Is your marketing campaign sufficiently visual? Images are at the core of modern marketing, but it’s important to grasp the full extent of visual marketing strategies now available, from traditional photography to the increasingly popular infographic. It’s no longer enough to stick to just one form of visual content.

Luckily, putting extra energy into your visual material will be worth your effort, since blogs featuring appropriate image content accrue 94% more views than those without such content. But, of course, some of these visuals are more powerful than others. It’s important to play to your content strengths.

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How to Pick the Best Name for Your Business

Brand name compilation

Naming your business can be one of the most challenging pieces of launching a business. There is so much equity tied up in a name, how it correlates with your logo, and the emotions and connotations it stimulates from its audience. One can easily fall down the rabbit hole while trying to pick the perfect name.

Fortunately, we’re here to help! There are a few tried-and-true tips to narrow your search and come up with a long-standing name for your business. While many of you already have a business name, you may be considering a rebrand or renaming, and these tips apply to you, too.

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6 Tips to Hook Your Website Visitors Into Staying

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If your business has a website, you face a monumental challenge. When a new customer visits your site, you have less than a minute to convince that customer to stay. Fifty-five percent of those visitors will leave less than 15 seconds after arriving. This puts the burden on your business to convince those customers to stick around.

“With attention spans seeming to get shorter every year, site design has to be more compelling than ever,” says Tomas Gorny, CEO of business communications provider Nextiva. “If you aren’t designing your websites to captivate potential customers, your competition probably is.”

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Why Content Marketing Matters for Your Small Business

Content marketing vector

Content marketing has become synonymous with successful businesses over the past few years. However, it remains an anomaly to many. Today, we’re going to dive into what content marketing is and how it can significantly impact your small business. Let’s start with the basics.

What is content marketing?

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action,” according to the Content Marketing Institute.

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How to Start and Build a Successful Blog

Blogging for business icons

 

Blogging has morphed from a small side business to a booming and lucrative industry. Thousands of people are making their living just from blogging with the help of sponsored content and affiliate marketing. The impact and influence of effective bloggers is staggering, and is a fantastic marketing force for small businesses.

Beyond the financial benefits of a successful blog, for small businesses, they offer a place where consumers can find answers to questions and the business can be known for its expertise and guidance. Blogs provide a place for businesses to showcase their offerings as well as their understanding of their audience and its needs. Blogs also allow businesses to backlink to their websites, which increases traffic, SEO rankings, and helps convert traffic into tangible business leads.

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How to Keep Your Social Media Afloat While on Vacation

Summer vacation and social

June 21 marked the first official day of summer and we couldn’t be more excited! The summer season brings warm weather, longer days, and well-deserved time off.  For micro and small businesses, though, summer vacations can feel impossible. Small business owners feel conflicted about being away as it has real implications on the business. Yet on flip side, they’re working around the clock and need a vacation. On top of that, social never sleeps so allowing your social presence to dwindle while away isn’t an option.

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6 Ways to Improve the Readability of Your Website Text

Website Text Vector

For your small business, your website plays an important role in establishing credibility and enticing people to become consumers. It is a primary method of verification among the public, and people don’t take website appearance lightly. If you’re an established business, your website is expected to reflect your level of professionalism and legitimacy. In fact, according to the Vistaprint Digital Impact Report on Online Identity,

“45% of people are unlikely to buy from a business with a poorly designed website.”

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Celebrate Small Goals on Your Way to Big Business Success

Large lightbulb vs. bunch of small lightbulbs

Small businesses need small goals; that sounds trite, right? While it may sound ‘cute’, it’s actually quite true for businesses of any size. Small goals are not a reflection of the ambition or overarching strategy of a business, but rather speak to the strategic way a business approaches its long-term goals. Small goals enable businesses to chip away at large objectives and celebrate their wins along the way. It takes time and effort to get a business up and running in a sustainable way, so taking time to note accomplishments of any size bolsters morale and helps you refocus on the bigger business goals. Jack Nickell, the owner of Threadless.com, perfectly summarizes what it takes to start a company:

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