Last week President Obama sat around a lunch table at a sandwich shop in Washington, DC. The topic of conversation: small business. Joined by the shop’s owner and other local leaders in commerce, the casual roundtable demonstrated the president’s renewed focus on small businesses – and the need for new initiatives to stimulate investment and hiring. (more…)
Cash flow is one of the trickiest things for a business owner to master. Novice business owners often think that all that ultimately matters is sales. Unfortunately, selling something doesn’t always mean that your business has cash in its proverbial pocket. All the money you make from sales has to go to pay suppliers, pay employees, and pay for your office space.
Is Pinterest the Twitter of 2012? Perhaps, perhaps not, but regardless an it poses an excellent business opportunity!
Have you heard about Pinterest? Chances are you have. What you may not have thought of is how this new form of social media can help you build your business and increase the visibility of your brand.
In its own words, Pinterest is an online pinboard that enables you to organize and share things you love. Users “pin” images or videos to themed online bulletin boards. These photos or clips can then be “re-pinned,” “liked” (similar to Facebook) or commented upon by other Pinterest users.
According to data compiled by comScore and shared by ad agency DraftFCB, the following groups make up the majority of Pinterest’s users:
If your business targets any of these user groups, you might consider leveraging this new “it” form of social media. For instance, are you a freelance wedding photographer? As you’ll see below, Pinterest is the leading social referer from MarthaStewartWeddings.com. If this is where your potential clients are, this is where you should be too.
Three additional reasons you should consider Pinterest to promote your brand:
1. Pinterest is becoming a significant source of referral traffic for retailers.
2. Pinterest allows for seamless social sharing on Twitter and Facebook, which creates the potential for more people to see and engage with your content across multiple channels.
3. Pinterest provides real-time feedback on consumer response. Each piece of content added to Pinterest has three clear engagement metrics: likes, repins, and comments. The more of these you get, the higher the consumer affinity for your brand or product. If it makes sense, you can add “Pin It” buttons to the product or content pages on your website to aid in organic sharing.
Social media continues to rapidly transform and, chances are, your business will have to transform its tactics along with it. Here at WorkingPoint, we make managing your small business easier, so that you can stay on the cutting edge.
-The WorkingPoint Team
Hearkening back to our post on successfully marketing yourself as a freelancer, today’s blog post highlights five small business competitions that can not only help build your reputation, but award you money to grow your business.
As anyone who has tried it knows, entrepreneurship takes a lot of planning and a lot of faith. Taking that leap to start your own business, or deciding to work as a freelancer, is a critical moment in anyone’s life. It gives you the power to decide how you’re going to make yourself happy and successful. For many of us, the moment came when we’d had “enough.” Enough job searching, enough of crappy bosses, enough of commutes and HR handbooks.
From copy-writers to graphic designers to photographers – making it in the freelance world depends on how well you sell your experience and abilities. You don’t have to be an expert in marketing, but a few tips and strategies can make it a lot easier to get noticed, and get paid.
To launch any new business, or expand your current business, you need start-up capital. However, before you apply for loans or credit cards, consider some not-so-traditional funding approaches; you may be surprised by what you find.
And now for our Word of The Day: Symbiosis, noun: a mutually beneficial relationship between two persons or groups.