by Justin Stravarius

Reposted from Web.App.Storm.Net

If you’re managing your small business using web apps, there’s a very good chance that you’ve heard about WorkingPoint. WorkingPoint is a unique, feature rich and affordable solution for keeping track of accounting, invoicing and bookkeeping of a small business.

We recently published 10 Amazing Apps Used by the Envato Team, and we’ve now asked WorkingPoint to share with us the apps they use to run their startup. From the web apps they are using we can infer that a major chunk of their operations are handled using web apps. Check out these ten great web apps after the jump.

1. WorkingPoint

WorkingPoint

Talk about eating your own dog food! WorkingPoint is a fantastic web app for small business management and no wonder, they’re using it in-house to keep the track of their books, send invoices and run the business. WorkingPoint app scored an impressive 9/10 in our earlier review.

2. Assistly

Assistly

WorkingPoint uses Assistly’s sleek customer support web app and are part of Assistly’s Beta testing group. Support requests from all modes — email as well as Social Media, such as twitter — are tracked, cases are assigned and documented using Assistly. The web app is also used to track and respond to tweets by multiple employees of WorkingPoint using a single Twitter account. Assisltly enables them to be on top of user opinions, feedback and thoughts on the WorkingPoint app from all sources.

3. Skype

Skype

Skype is the defacto communication tool in almost all technology startups. WorkingPoint uses Skype to make calls, chat with people and to share files.

4. WordPress

WordPress

WordPress has turned out to be the Microsoft Windows of blogging. WorkingPoint’s official blog is powered by a self-hosted version of the WordPress blogging platform. As a side note, I recommend everyone check out the fantastic articles on the blog (Loved the Botpreneur repost.)

5. Vertical Response

Vertical Response

For executing email marketing campaigns and sending out newsletters, WorkingPoint uses the Vertical Response web app. Vertical Response boasts a 500,000-strong user base and integrates nicely with Google Apps and Salesforce platforms.

6. SEOmoz

SEOmoz

Search Engine Optimization and Marketing are important aspects to keep an online business visible to people searching for relevant keywords. SEOMoz’s tools are used to evaluate the effectiveness of WorkingPoint’s SEO & SEM campaigns.

7. Jing

Jing

From the makers of the very famous SnagIt screen capture software, TechSmith, comes the JingProject. Jing is a free web app to add visuals to your online conversations. WorkingPoint uses Jing to create and share videos about their app.

8. Skitch

Skitch

Skitch is used to take screenshots, annotate and share them among the team to keep everyone posted on the app development progress.

9. Github

GitHub

GitHub is the hosted version of Git, an extremely fast, efficient, distributed version control system ideal for the collaborative development of software. Version control of the entire WorkingPoint code base is taken care of by GitHub.

10. VMware Fusion

VMware Fusion

VMware is a pioneer and leader in the field of desktop virtualization software. Cross-browser compatibility of the WorkingPoint app, primarily on Internet Explorer for Windows, is checked using VMware Fusion.

Final Thoughts

The WorkingPoint team uses some of the best apps in each of their respective categories. What is your take? Do you think there is a better alternative that could enhance their productivity? What team’s apps would you like to find out about next?

It does! How does he do it?

Courtesy of Sparky Firepants (also known as David), a real life WorkingPoint user! Check out his other awesome work at www.sparkyfirepants.com.

Yesterday in Part 1, we discussed being generous as part of our Social Media strategy. Today, in Part 2, I want to start to look at being genuine. Being genuine has two sides: the good side where real customers say great things about you and the bad side where you deal with real, immediate criticism  of your business and your product. No product is 100% perfect and criticism is inevitable.

Social Media is about open dialogue and with that comes a transparency in communication that can be a little frightening. With Social Media for business, you don’t get to control the conversation, your customers do. This can be really positive thing for your business because your potential consumers know that all that glowing praise of the product in Social Media is genuine. I personally find that I place more value on referrals from Social Media because I know that it’s coming from real people. I even know who says it (no such thing as privacy in Social Media, right?).

But this transparency, this genuine customer interaction in a public forum, can be hard to swallow when the things that people are saying aren’t so good.

These days even person to person communication isn’t sacred, as letters (like this one from AT&T to a customer), phone calls, videos, yelp reviews, and other  business/consumer communications fuel viral content through the magic of the internet. It is scary to be so exposed.

One of my personal role models in the Social Media sphere is local company (and Small Business turned success story) Method. Their Facebook page is fun. It is also filled with thousands of engaged fans. How would you like to have 155 people answer your Wednesday Quiz question in between your customers talking about how much they love your product like in this screen shot below?

Even more impressive, their Facebook page has become an open forum for customers to ask support questions, discuss product features and ingredients and interact directly with the company.

The level of engagement demonstrated here is exciting for Social Media advocates like me. This is exactly how the Social Media sphere should be used to enhance your business. They are  impressively genuine with their interaction, answering frank questions and criticism with aplomb and their trademark approachability and wit.

Sometimes, like in  this post about a new product launch, the company falls under criticism for their decisions – in this case to carry a new line of baby products exclusively at Babys R Us.  These busy parents, most of whom also have older kids, were highly critical of what they deemed an undesirable location. As one Mom put it, “If you have older kids, there is NO REASON to go into Babies-r-us JUST for Method! Come on Marketing people….does that make ANY SENSE!!”.  Rather than attempt to mitigate or control this criticism, Method chose to let the conversation (and criticism) continue, and I’m sure gained valuable insight into their target market as a result.

They also came off, to a loyal consumer like me, as continuing to be real, approachable and genuine, characteristics that I believe apply to their company and as a result, their product.

Herre’s another example I found of potentially harsh criticism (this time of their customer support) which I think ultimately ended up being very positive.

Their grace in this forum no doubt fosters the continued popularity and usage of their Social Media platforms, which in turn bolsters their network of Advocates, Champions, Bloggers, Taste Makers and other people who are just talking about their products.

The age of Social Media may also be the era where everyone accepts that you just can’t control everything that’s said about you. In the aftermath of the BP oil spill, the company notoriously tried to manipulate the conversation about them by purchasing key words on Google associated with the controversy. Ultimately, it only makes you look worse. In this case it resulted in a public condemnation by the President of the United States, where he (and everyone else) agreed that they should of spent the money on trying to STOP and CLEAN UP the actual oil spill.

The oft cited failure that is the “Facebook Nestle Mess”, is another example where attempts to control and manipulate the conversation backfired horribly.

This story, excerpted from Allfacebook.com illustrates how trying to suppress or hide content was just adding fuel to the fire.

“The gist of the situation is that environmental protection group Greenpeace, who are known for their unorthodox and sometimes heavy-handed ways of bringing attention, created a parody video (but it’s somewhat gory, not funny) on YouTube of Nestle’s KitKat candy bar product. The video suggests that the production of a key ingredient, palm oil, helps further the destruction of rainforests, which in turn threatens endangered species such as the Orangutan. Greenpeace says that the Paradise Forests in Sumatra in particular are suffering a record-breaking deforestation rate.

Nestle reacted by requesting that youTube take it down. Viewer comments suggest that it was taken down, but that hasn’t stopped the video from reappearing on multiple video sharing sites, in multiple copies. This sharing of the video is making it go viral.

In addition to the Greenpeace video, there’s an animated parody of Nestle’s reaction. In it, two animated characters (using xtranormal.com’s web software) pretend to be Nestle employees and talk about how they’ll get the Greenpeace video removed by citing copyright violation. (In truth, their trademark has been used in the Greenpeace video without permission, so this isn’t really a copyright issue, as far as I know.) Now, there are parody logos popping up that look like Nestle’s KitKat(tm) packaging but replace the brand name with the word “killer”.” – Raj Dash, Allfacebook.com

I hope that by holding these two examples up side by side, you will see the importance of being genuine in your social media strategy. Criticism is unavoidable, but if you can be genuine and use that criticism as a platform to demonstrate your engagement with your community, how much you care about your customers and how you are working hard to address the problem then this “negative dialogue” can actually really be positive. Trying to cover it up  or make it go away hurts your credibility and causes problems.

At my last job we had a policy that prevented deleting any content on any social media platform unless it included a threat of violence, was sexually explicit or otherwise deemed “unsafe”. Being genuine in Social Media, like in life, means there is no delete button.

That’s why at WorkingPoint we don’t just use our Social Media Strategy for marketing and promotion, we also use it to provide support for our customers. We are not afraid to have our support questions aired in a public forum (in fact we kind of like it).We actively troll Twitter and Facebook to see if people are talking about experiencing problems with our product and then proactively seek to solve those problems. We also use it to look for inspiration for new features we should develop or existing features we should improve.

As I mentioned yesterday, Social Media provides an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate that you care about people in your community. Using the open forum and the conversation to provide genuine, real time support for your customers is one effective  way to do that.

Below are some examples of from the WorkingPoint Facebook Page. We are proud of the engagement of our users in this forum, for the feedback, both positive and constructive, and for the opportunity to support our valued community.

Lastly, I wanted to address one more detail about the results in Part 1 about our Facebook page which I neglected to include. The fact that I have only been here, working actively on the social media policy for 1 month. These results are achievable for anyone, and the payout can be exceptionally quick. More so, it can be incredibly gratifying to engage directly with your community and can infuse more energy into your work (or at least it does for me!).

This infographic is from the book Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web. Now it’s my screensaver and as WorkingPoint’s Community Resource and Marketing Manager‘,  I all stare at it all day for inspiration and guidance.

There is a lot of buzz around the use of Social Media. Amber Naslund wrote this great post on her website Brass Tack Thinking that to me highlighted just how popular the discussion of Social Media really is. By looking at the proliferation of pages about different terms as a barometer for the level of interest she was able to demonstrate that Social Media trumps other types of marketing at an astonishing rate. Her results:

Number of web pages Google finds for the following phrases:

“direct mail ROI” – 131,000
“email ROI” 55,900
“radio ROI” – 33,200
“TV ROI” – 12,600 (television roi is just 291)
“magazine ROI” – 3,150
“newspaper ROI” – 210
“billboard ROI” – 85

“social media ROI” – 796,000

796,000 people seem are thinking about, talking about, writing about, and possibly looking for ways to use Social Media! Never one to ignore a bandwagon I could hop on, I decided that WorkingPoint  might also have something to add to the conversation.

As the Community Resource and Marketing Manager, part of my job is to implement WorkingPoint’s Social Media strategy. Part of my job is also to find and develop resources that our community of Small Businesses might benefit from. Since I think a Social Media Strategy will benefit most small businesses like WorkingPoint, I decided to follow my own advice and share all my secrets with you.

I decided to skip the part of the conversation where I convince you that using Social Media is worthwhile on the assumption that most likely if you are reading this you’ve already been convinced of the value of social media for your small business. If you need more convincing I suggest read this great article, “Why Small Businesses Shouldn’t Take Social Media for Granted ” which also points out that you could be part of the 24% of cutting edge businesses who were smart enough to use Social Media before your competitors do.

You’re ready for the next step, which is figuring out what to do. There are lots of articles that will give you detailed and complex suggestions for plans, platforms and strategies. These articles are really, really great and I absolutely recommend you check them out. Read as many of them as you have time for, and I promise to continue to post my favorites to @workingpoint and on the WorkingPoint Facebook page, but before we get into advanced strategies I want to start with the basic concepts of our Social Media Strategy.

This core strategy is our secret sauce and I promise they will make all those other strategies more effective and more fun.

The strategy is so simple it can be summed up in two words:

Generous and Genuine.

Social Media Marketing’s fundamental difference between traditional marketing, in my opinion, is that it’s about building community first and foremost. And building community is about being part of something bigger than just yourself. It’s really, really hard to build community if all you do is talk about your product. Just like it’s really, really hard to make friends if all you do is talk about yourself.

If you look at the Compass above the innermost circle, your connection to everything else, your first step, are all people. People you want to make like you. Advocates, Champions, Bloggers, Taste Makers, whatever you call them they are people, and if they like you they will use what you offer and talk about it. Moreover, if you can become part of their community they will talk about you a lot. Social Media is about the conversation and about building a community of people who will talk about you. You want to be an active and valued part of the community and it’s conversation.

One genuine way to be part of the conversation (more on that tomorrow) is show people that you care about them. Social Media provides an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate that you care about people in your community is by sharing. Sharing exciting news about your business and sharing useful things that you find that have nothing to do with you . Reposting, retweeting, sharing on Facebook. If you find something cool that has nothing to do with you, but you think will add to this conversation then use your Social Media platforms to share it with them. This is being generous.

In fact I’ve found an easy way to manipulate the Facebook post rankings on our page is to alternate a link from our website (usually to our blog) with a link anywhere else. You can watch the results change immediately, overnight, if you have only been using your Facebook page to link back to your own site. Since we started including outside content on our Facebook page, the number of fans has more than doubled, the number of interactions per week has quadrupled and the post quality fluctuates between 10 and 15 points higher than it did before. We also earned another star on Facebook’s page ranking.

Sharing useful information, ideas and products even if you can’t directly benefit from sharing them (and by directly benefit I mean instantly profit) is being generous. You become part of the dialogue. You position yourself as a member of the community with something to contribute. You demonstrate your expertise, become a resource or a “go to” and hopefully, that means people will “go to” your business.

The generous Social Media Strategy encourages you to give it up for free, like HubSpot’s Website Grader or David Meerman Scott’s incredible free ebook “The New Rules of Viral Marketing” which is where I personally learned about the Website Grader and the 150,000 unique URLS which were submitted for grading (each one a potential customer for HubSpots inbound marketing system). Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking engagements that David recieved as a result of his first free ebook “The New Rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly” which was downloaded 250,000 times.**

It is in this vain that we at WorkingPoint have been working hard to spread the word about awesome content and helpful information that does not directly relate to WorkingPoint’s Financial Tool. Like I said before, join us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @workingpoint and I promise you access all the hottest articles and useful resources to make your business flourish no matter how big it is. Marketing, Inspirational Stories, whatever it is, if we think it will help you to be successful we are sharing it.

You can also visit our freshly minted, hot of the presses Resource Page which has our blog feed, twitter feed and also will soon be filled with lots of awesome resource guides, forms and our new 10 minute lesson series. 10 Minute Lesson on Basic Accounting and Terms is available now and I have to say, it’s a pretty awesome bookkeeping resource for a small business even if you don’t use WorkingPoint.

Stay tuned for Part 2: Genuine tomorrow and let me know what you think! I love to hear from you!

** The Website Grader and the Guides are great free tools we recommend you use!

Always Sunny as it’s known by its league of fans, is really a story of people trying to run a small family business. It’s owners, like most small businesses, struggle with how to be personally successful and how to make their business successful. They are motivated primarily by improving their quality of life and by personal and professional ambitions. It is in some ways, the quintessential story of the small family business. I’ve been told that running Paddy’s Bar, is the “American Dream”. Who wouldn’t want to run a bar with her best friends and her Dad?

Yes, Always Sunny is a parody of American greed, morality and ambition thrust in the amusing framework of running a small business. These are not role models. “The Gang” as they are known, is a group of five hilarious but conniving and manipulative alcoholics absent of all sense of loyalty, morality, and fair play. They posses an astonishing and habitual love of lying, cheating and shortcuts involving violence. Each episode revolves around hatching some type of flawed, self-serving plan that aims to provide for personal wealth and/or business success, preferably at the expense of each other and everyone else unfortunate enough to be in their path.

And you say there’s a lesson for my small business in here?

Yes! Always Sunny uses common patterns of behavior and long held acumen that real businesses employ and then expands them into grotesque parodies. These are real situations, blown up until their horrific exaggeration illuminates the flaw in the practice. Always Sunny is a perfect roadmap for exactly what not to do with your business. If only our own mistakes were so blatantly obvious!

Take the clip below, which stems from the eternal struggle of the business to increase its profile and revenue stream.

Please note: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia contains mature subject matter, foul language, violence and sexuality and is recommended for adult viewers only.

Small businesses all start with one thing in common. An idea. But how do you know if your idea is worth investing your time and resources? How can you evaluate the idea before investing any capital, whether it be a new product, a new way to market your business or a new system?

Kitten Mittons are a great case study to examine a methodology for evaluating a new idea. We like to call it the “Two Questions” method:

Question #1:What problem does it solve?

Having a goal or mission statement, one which defines the problem you are trying to solve with your product/service, will help you refine your marketing, product development, and overall vision. This will help you define your audience and evaluate the potential feasibility of your endeavor.

What problem does Kitten Mittons Solve? Answer: Your cat walking around is making so much noise and driving you crazy.

Question #2: Is it a problem people want or need solved?”

Once you have reframed the idea in answer to Question #2, you can really evaluate the idea and its potential.

In this case, “loud cat walking” is not a problem that needs to be solved, because cats as nocturnal hunters have evolved padded feet so that they can sneak up on their prey.

Finding the answer to these two questions will help you refine your vision and your mission statement and pinpoint a demographic and the appropriate voice to target that demographic. It can also help you pause before moving forward with an idea that may lack sustainability.

The fact that “The Gang” is constantly generating creative ideas to generate new clientele and revenue sources in itself is not a bad thing. In fact, their willingness to constantly generate new promotional ideas and new products is awe inspiring, as is their constant stream of creative ideas. They are hungry and willing to take risks and as a small business owner you should be also! Stopping to use the “Two Questions Method” is a quick way to evaluate an idea before you start to invest time and resources.

Stay tuned for more lessons from Always Sunny and feel free to let us know if there are other shows which have taught you about how to run your business!

Thanks for illustrating just why a home business can be so hard…

Courtesy of Sparky Firepants (also known as David), a WorkingPoint user! Check out his other awesome work at www.sparkyfirepants.com.

Susan Spicer, the New Orlean’s Chef who’s become the unwitting poster child for small businesses in the Gulf region effected by the oil spill, gave her first interview yesterday about her decision to file suit with the New York Times Diner’s Journal.

“We are already seeing casualties right and left, human causalities, business casualties, cultural casualties,” she said in the interview.

As someone who lived in New Orleans, I understand the myriad ways that the oil spill is damaging the small business community in that region. The first to be affected were the Fisherman, who were immediately placed in peril by the ban on finishing. There was no immediate impact on the cost and availability of seafood and experts predicted that a speedy resolution could prevent economic ripples.

Unfortunately the situation continues without a solution, and the economic impact of the spill continues to ripple outward taking new businesses in it’s wake. As Spicer emphasizes, the local culinary map is built on showcasing fresh caught local seafood. Now, what little uncontaminated ingredients are available are prohibitively expensive, and even then people are scared to eat these ingredients for fear of contamination both from the oil and the chemicals used for clean up.  This is having a more immediate effect, and rendering more casualties, among the smaller businesses and restaurants that lack the resources to withstand these circumstances.

Even as the Federal Government and the Small Business Association step in with loans, State Governments join the Hotels, shrimpers and now restaurants looking to BP to compensate for the loss of revenue caused by the spill. Meanwhile, further hardships loom as the hurricane season begins in the coming months, threatening even more harm to businesses that are still weakened from the damage wrought by four massive hurricanes in the last five years.

These small businesses are as much a victim of the spill as the poor sea creatures, who’s oil covered visages populate the media’s consciousness.

Small businesses are the most vulnerable to these kinds of unpredictable disasters, lacking the resources and reserves to sustain them through loss in revenue and unexpected increases in cost of supplies.

Does your business have a disaster plan in place? Being prepared and having a plan can go a long way to helping your business survive unforeseen challenges. Below are some resources to help you build a plan for your business should disaster strike:

How to Build a Disaster Plan for Your Business

How to Create a Business Continuity Plan (Also Known as a Disaster Recovery Plan)

by Angelique Rewers
Reposted Courtesy of Richersmarterhappier.com

A few weeks ago, I listened to a teleseminar about how to grow your opt-in list to 100,000 subscribers and beyond, when one of the guests shared a great tip. He said, “Think of the online sales process as TLC: Traffic = Leads = Customers.” That’s simple enough. But how do you drive more traffic to your site? A lot of online marketers will try to sell you on one single strategy as THE answer. But what we’ve found in terms of driving traffic to our own website—as well as helping our clients get more traction on theirs—is that using a combination of different tactics simultaneously gets the best results. To help you get more traffic flowing—and, thus, more leads and more customers—we’ve put together a checklist of 19 simple ways to continuously bring people to your site. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it will give you some new ideas to try. And please don’t attempt to implement all of them at once. Rather, start by picking the strategies that feel the most doable for you right now, and add others when you feel the time is right.

___ 1. Social Media.Online communities like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are excellent tools for building relationships and generating web traffic. The thing to keep in mind however, is that it’s not enough to simply be active on these forums; you also need to include links within your posts and give people a reason to click on them. In other words, take a few extra minutes to craft something witty to say and then drive folks to compelling (read: fresh, thought-provoking, useful) content. A few weeks ago, I listened to a teleseminar about how to grow your opt-in list to 100,000 subscribers and beyond, when one of the guests shared a great tip. He said, “Think of the online sales process as TLC: Traffic = Leads = Customers.” (Note: For more great tips on how to use social media effectively, be sure to check out our info-packed special report, The 11 Most Costly Social Media Marketing Mistakes… & The Easy Ways to Get it Right.)

___ 2. Blogging. There are countless reasons to have your own blog, not the least of which is that it can help steer a tremendous amount of visitors to your website. How? For starters, when you frequently post new content, it improves your ranking on search engines. Blog articles also give you something compelling to share on social media sites (see #1 above), and give people who already “know you” a reason to come back to your site again and again. Plus, if you incorporate social media widgets into your blog, it makes it easy for folks to share your content with their network, which in turn brings even more people to your site.

___ 3. Search Engine Directories.This one might not be as “sexy” as the others, but it’s important to be in front of people who are actually searching for the types of products or services you offer. Internet “crawlers” for the big search engines (i.e. Google, Bing, MSN and Yahoo!) are automated and will eventually find your site. However, you often need to proactively submit your site to many of the local and industry-specific directories, which you can locate with a simple internet search. Here’s a great list of free directories to help you get started.

___ 4. Pay-Per-Click Advertising.Popular search engines allow you to bid on how much you’re willing to “pay per click” on key words that people are searching on. As a result, your listing will appear above the regular (or what’s called “organic”) listings. These paid ads typically have a shaded background and are identified as “sponsored links.” Google AdWords is the pay-per-click tool people most often think of, but Facebook also has pay-per-click advertising and, personally, we’ve found it a whole lot easier to navigate than Google. If you’re thinking of pursuing this strategy and you don’t deem yourself a pay-per-click expert, then we recommend working with a pro so that you don’t end up in over your head.

___ 5. Publishing An E-zine. If you publish your own e-zine or e-newsletter, you already have a warm pool of prospects who are interested in what you have to offer. The real secret though is that you have to continually give them reasons within your e-zine to visit your website again and again, such as by adding new content or offering subscriber-only deals and discounts for your products, services or events.

___ 6. Article Marketing.Having your articles re-published in other people’s e-zines and on other people’s blogs is a proven traffic-building tactic. However, while it is technically “free,” it can also be time consuming. Instead of contacting e-zine publishers and website owners individually, save time by posting your articles on free content sites like EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com. You can also delegate this task to a virtual assistant or an intern.

___ 7. Ads in E-zines. Identify other e-zines whose readership matches your target market. You can do this by searching the Directory of E-zines. Find out if the e-zines accept advertising and what their rates are. Run at least three to four ads in a row to get an accurate idea of how well the ad is working. Also, make sure you use an ad-tracking program to determine how many clicks each ad is getting, such as the one we use that comes with our shopping cart system.

___ 8. Cross Promotions.Do you know anyone who currently publishes a quality e-zine or blog for the same target market as yours? If so, explore ways you could cross promote each other, thus helping drive traffic to each other’s site. For example, we’re big fans of TheSolopreneurLife.com. The site’s owner, Larry Kellto, has graciously mentioned our content in his fabulous “Friday Bits” and on his recommended resources page, and we’ve highlighted his site in our e-zine and on our blog roll.

___ 9. Banner Advertising. Placing ads on websites has gotten a bit of a bad wrap. But if it’s done well, it can really help to boost your web traffic. You’ll want to find sites that are already attracting your target market, and be sure your banner ads give viewers a persuasive incentive to click through and come to your site, such as a free report or a generous discount.

___ 10. Online Forums and Discussion Groups. According to expert marketer Ali Brown, “There are faster traffic methods for sure, but this one is still great if you’re dealing with a hot topic.” You can make this strategy work for you by identifying popular forums and discussion groups that are related to your subject area and where prospects in your target market are hanging out. Really let your expertise show through in your postings. While you don’t want to be overly promotional, you should always include a link back to your website.

___ 11. Run an Affiliate Program.We’ll be talking more about how to earn extra income through affiliate programs in this week’s issue of Brilliance! But aside from helping you grow your income, affiliate programs are also valuable because your affiliate members will help you drive traffic to your website. The more affiliates you have, the more traffic you’ll be getting. (Psst! We’re getting ready to launch some very exciting commission opportunities for our Richer. Smarter. Happier. affiliates. So be sure to sign up for our Inner Circle program to get in on the action!!)

___ 12. Your E-mail Auto-signature.Just about every e-mail application today provides an option for an auto-sig file – the few lines of contact information that automatically appear at the bottom of every e-mail you send. Take advantage of this free “real estate” by crafting a short blurb that encourage people to visit your site. Keep the copy fresh – you should change it up at least once per month. And remember: E-mails get forwarded around all the time, so it’s not just about the folks you communicate with, but also the people they communicate with.

___ 13. Video. Thanks to Flip cameras, it’s never been easier (or cheaper) to record and post your own online videos. It’s a good idea to post the content to both your own website as well as on social media sites like YouTube. Just be sure that when you post on the latter, you put your website address along the bottom of the video for the entire film – not just at the end. And here’s an added bonus as well: Visitors to a website with a video are likely to stay on the page as much as 300% longer compared to a webpage without one.

___ 14. Media Publicity. The right exposure in print publications and on radio and television can help you attract hundreds or even thousands of new “eyeballs” to your website again and again. Just like with the other strategies though, you’ll need to incentivize people to come to your site. You may want to give a special, limited-time discount or offer up a free report or checklist that they can download. For radio and TV you’ll also want to have a URL that’s super simple to spell and remember.

___ 15. In-Person Events. We’re BIG proponents of in-person opportunities like speaking gigs, networking events and trade shows for a whole host of reasons, including the fact that they are great list builders. At each event, collect attendees’ e-mail addresses by offering something free. For example, at the recent African American Heritage Festival we held a drawing for a free Apple iPad. (At smaller events we typically give away a copy of a best-selling book.) In addition to adding attendees to your e-zine list, the day after the event you’ll also want to send everyone a welcome email and include a link to something interesting on your website.

___ 16. Business Cards.More than likely your web address is printed somewhere on your business card. But do you give folks a real reason to visit your site? That should be job No. 1 of your business card. Next time you need to reorder your stash, add on a call to action, such as inviting people to download your top tips or to sign up for your free e-zine.

___ 17. Direct Mail. One of the most overlooked marketing tactics today is good-old-fashioned direct mail. Things like postcards and flyers are a fast, easy and reliable way to generate leads and increase visitors to your site. Best of all, they’re a great way to cut through all the online noise. We use and love OvernightPrints.com. Just be sure to factor in the cost of postage when you’re calculating your budget.

___ 18. Vehicle Signage. Why not promote your business and your website while you’re cruising around town or running errands? It’s a great way to multi-task for sure. In fact, I’m about to start using this tactic myself; I plan to have the Richer. Smarter. Happier. logo and website emblazoned across the back of my silver Infiniti QX56. I’ll be sure to share more about this (and post a photo) in an upcoming article!

____ 19.Search Engine Optimization. This term gets thrown around a lot – and we certainly don’t profess to be SEO experts. But if you want more people finding you online, then you need to make sure your website has the basic SEO components incorporated, like meta, image and title tags. Our advice? Because there is A LOT to learn and the SEO rules keep changing all the time, this is an area you may want to outsource entirely. Finally, don’t forget that it’s important to be measuring which of these tactics are and are not working. There are a number of programs that can help you understand how many visitors are coming to your site and when, how they are finding you, and what they are doing when they get there. The tool we use is Google Analytics, which is easy to use and free. You can get more info about it here.
Small business marketing consultants, Angelique Rewers, ABC, APR and Dr. Toni Cascio, teach women how to start, grow and market profitable businesses that are a part of a life they love™. Get their FREE weekly tips and advice at www.RicherSmarterHappier.com.

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to Daniel Healey of The Little Pinecone Company:

“dedicated to selling a product to you that is not only friendly to the Earth but respects the Environment as well.  We are proud that our product, The TREADer®, promotes a green mode of transportation as we head towards the future.”

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The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to Beth of Beth Plummer Graphic Design:

Beth is “a Graphic Designer / Creative Art Director with more than 25 years’ experience in print design, production and purchasing. [She is] skilled in capturing client vision and delivering graphics in support of desired brand and marketing strategy.”

Don’t have a profile for your small business? Learn more or Sign up for an account and create your free company profile today!