Oct 31: When To Start Outsourcing Some Of Your Busy Work

When should you start thinking about outsourcing some of your tasks? As a small business entrepreneur, time is always scarce, and you find that you just can’t do everything yourself the way you would like to. Maybe you’ve thought about outsourcing, but it’s not a simple decision because you need to compare the cost and quality of the person or company that will be working for you.

A simple search for companies using the terms “virtual assistant” and “outsourcing” will reveal a plethora of firms and virtual assistants that offer outsourcing services for everyday business tasks – such as customer service, tech support, bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounting, and even social media marketing. Read more…

Recommended: The Unexpected Benefits of Crowdfunding

Oct 31: 8 Key Steps to a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

Crowdfunding is a way of raising money for a new venture by soliciting small donations from many people online. The biggest platforms in the industry are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. In the last five years, crowdfunding has grown from a tool for off-beat bands to raise money from fans for an album they can’t afford to produce to a way for some really high tech inventors to get access to capital for their new, innovative startups.

Following is the checklist of 8 steps to prepare for your campaign.

1. Read more…

Recommended: How to Manage Your Digital Marketing Without Falling Behind

Oct 31: 22 Things Advertising People Learn to live with

1. Everyone hates status meetings.

2. When it’s eerily quiet on the line, you know the other callers are talking shit on mute.

3. And as soon as you get off the phone, you do this so you can chat about all the stupid stuff said on the call.

4. You see these buzzwords in emails almost every day.

5. Read more…

Recommended: 6 Tips For An Effective Text Message Marketing Campaign

Oct 31: 10 Content Marketing Ideas to Promote your Small Business or Startup Company

Small business marketers who use content marketing are able to reduce the cost of leads, increase awareness and position themselves as leaders.

In recent years, marketers have been forced to think differently about how they engage with potential customers, particularly small business marketers.

Every year, customers have increasing control over what marketing messages they wish to consume. Read more…

Recommended: How To Be A Better Manager – 4 Tips

Oct 31: How to Empower Entrepreneurs With Crowdfunding

Prior to Crowdfunding, starting a business was nearly a mission impossible.

Entrepreneurs had only three choices of raising capital: (1) Friends & Family (2) Bank and (3) Angel or Venture Capital.

Then in 2007, all that changed when Prosper.com launched the first peer-to-peer lending service in the US. Read more…

Recommended: 10 Content Marketing Trends You Need To Know For Success

Oct 31: Best Online Sites For Small Businesses To Advertise

Are you a small business owner who feels just wasting your dollars to advertise?

Do you want to know where actually the best places to advertise your small business online?

So, let’s get started.

In addition to sites mentioned blow, don’t forget other online marketing sites. You can visit 40billion.com which is a fastest-growing network of entrepreneurs and crowdfunders. Read more…

Recommended: 13 Marketing Tips When Using Social Networks

Oct 31: How to Advertise Your Business to 2,500,000 People on 4 Social Networks for $20

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

Oct 31: 5 Surprising Reasons To Raise The Price Of Your Product

Should you charge a premium price for providing an extraordinary experience and value? Why bang your head against the wall trying to undercut competitors’ prices?

Selling premium products and services at premium prices leads to greater profits. If you want to make a million this year, you’d have to sell 40,000 copies of your product at $25. Read more…

Recommended: How to Create Buzzworthy Content That Users Share

Oct 31: 6 Tips For An Effective Text Message Marketing Campaign

If you want to reach local customers and keep them coming back to your business, text-message marketing is one of the most effective strategies for doing so. While email marketing messages are opened by a small percentage of recipients, text message ads are typically viewed by almost all recipients.

SMS messaging is also an ideal way for sending coupons that will get noticed and used, at a much lower cost than printing physical coupons. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Reasons Why You May Not Need To Write A Business Plan After All

Oct 31: How To Get Influencers To Endorse And Grow Your Business

Wouldn’t you like to have a celebrity recommend your product or service? This type of endorsement has been known to boost businesses and sales. But dealing with influencers, such as celebrities, can be tricky because they tend to get thousands of free sample products in the mail from businesses hoping to get their attention. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Traits Of Successful Entrepreneurs

Oct 31: With So Many Social Networking Sites, Which One Is Right For Your Business?

Feeling pulled this way and that by the latest and greatest social site? While you don’t want to miss out on the action, don’t waste time with the “next big thing” unless it’s right for you. With that in mind, below are some guidelines for making the most of your social media forays.

Ignore the chatter about how much web traffic a certain site is receiving each month, and take a look at what your competition is really doing. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Reasons Young People Should Become Entrepreneurs

Oct 31: 4 Ways To Keep Your Website From Getting Hacked

Small businesses are especially vulnerable to hacking because they usually lack the technology expertise and site security that larger companies have. They also suffer more if their lack of expertise slows repairs and their ability to get back to work. Read more…

Recommended: How To Keep Your Employees Motivated

Oct 30: 6 Ways to Create Content that Attracts Audiences and Customers

Coming up with ways to interact with your audience daily can start to make you feel as though you’re stretching your creative capacity a little thin. Yet developing strategies to engage with your audience and keep them coming back for more is critical to long-term social success. Connect with customers for the long haul with these 6 content strategies that will spur conversation and tell a story over time:

1. Read more…

Recommended: New to Crowdfunding? Here’s What to Expect.

Oct 30: How to Promote Your Crowdfunding Project to 2,500,000 People for Only $20

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

Oct 30: 4 More Ways to Create a Brand That Customers Remember

It takes only 3 to 5 seconds to form a first impression. If your business doesn’t capture attention at first glance, not only are you missing out on brand recognition but on sales too.

If you haven’t felt your brand is quite at the level you envisioned, use these tips to step it up. From messaging strategy to visual content creation, here are 4 ways to make sure you’re delivering consistent, on-brand content.

1. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Winning Social Marketing Strategies From Top Brands

Oct 30: With So Many Social Networking Sites, Which One Is Right For Your Business?

Feeling pulled this way and that by the latest and greatest social site? While you don’t want to miss out on the action, don’t waste time with the “next big thing” unless it’s right for you. With that in mind, below are some guidelines for making the most of your social media forays.

Ignore the chatter about how much web traffic a certain site is receiving each month, and take a look at what your competition is really doing. Read more…

Recommended: Social Advertising Is Here To Stay. Learn To Live With It.

Oct 30: Crowdfunding vs Venture Capital

It seems like a catchy idea is all an aspiring entrepreneur needs these days in order to raise money on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and GoFundMe. Do crowds gravitate toward funding bad ideas? Or can crowds make rational funding decisions and, better yet, exceed venture capital investors and banks in identifying promising projects?

The crowd is often thought of as being a group of fools, but it turns out the crowd does consider the quality of projects and outcomes pretty well. Read more…

Recommended: Lead Generation: 19 Tips For Better Results

Oct 30: 3 Reasons To Work For A Startup First

You’re an aspiring entrepreneur, so why are you working for an entrepreneur? Is working at another startup a route to nowhere or a good career move? It just might pay to work at someone else’s startup before starting your own. Here are 3 reasons why:

1) Startups can take a chance on talent.

Getting a first job is key to launching your career as an entrepreneur. Read more…

Recommended: 4 More Ways to Create a Brand That Customers Remember

Oct 30: Boost Summer Sales With These 4 Tips

Many people accept that a slowdown in sales is a fact of business life during the summer. Well, nothing could be further from the truth, and as a business owner you need to get out of that frame of mind.

A summer slowdown may be something many people want because they expect this to be a season for vacations when the living is easy. Read more…

Recommended: How To Deal With The Risky Business Of Launching Your Own Startup

Oct 30: Improve Your E-Mail Marketing – Follow These 10 Steps

Most brands have a “pretty decent” email marketing program, but could it be better? Take a look at these 11 things to try and improve your engagement.

1. Take a hard look at your preference strategy.

There are three tips on capturing preferences: ask them, observe them and group them (into categories). Read more…

Recommended: 5 Ways Entrepreneurs Who Take Vacations Are More Successful

Oct 30: How to Advertise Your Business to 2,500,000 People on 4 Social Networks for $20

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

Oct 30: Traditional Marketing And Content Marketing: Can They Co-Exist?

As content marketing continues to grow in popularity, a question being asked more and more is “should I replace my traditional marketing with content marketing?” The short answer is no.

It’s easy to pile onto the idea that print, radio, and even TV are on their way out as marketing platforms – but if they are effective, you shouldn’t give them up. Read more…

Recommended: Targeting B2B Customers Effectively When Your Targets Keep Moving

Oct 30: 8 Reasons Why Your Content Marketing May Fail

Today, nearly every business is attempting to become a content marketer. The results aren’t pretty. The noise is deafening and while there’s plenty of great content, every industry is being bombarded with junk-cheap imitations of the idea of content marketing-create original, compelling, helpful content. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Traits Of Successful Entrepreneurs

Oct 30: 4 Ways To Overcome Fear And Be More Confident

Ever experienced fear or doubt about your abilities? To the degree you can overcome your insecurities, you will experience freedom to be yourself and reach your full potential as an entrepreneur. The most important thing to understand is that everyone experiences these scary emotions to some degree, regardless of how confident and self-assured people may seem.

Follow these 4 tips to overcome fear and get to that next level in your business goals:

1) Don’t forget that it’s normal. Read more…

Recommended: Step-By-Step Guide For Social Video Marketing

Oct 30: Keeping Up with the Changing Face of Advertising

Advertising is changing at lightning speed with the internet. When businesses started flocking online, they found amazing opportunities to reach consumers outside of traditional media like print and television. But even in the last few years, those advertising options have shifted tremendously.

Gone are the days of the pop up – well, mostly. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Tips To Recruit The Best Employees For Your Startup

Oct 30: How to Brainstorm Breakthrough Ideas for Your Business

It’s also a time to reflect on your business and find the spark for your next breakthrough idea.

No clue what that is? To ignite new light bulb moments, start with these idea-generating tactics:

Embrace fear.

Ask yourself: “What scares me?” Then, explore that dark space. What if you overhauled your product and reintroduced it – what features would it have? Where would you invest money if you replaced a major conference or trade show with other lead-generating activities? Even if something is working for you, is there a way to make it better? As for your competition, instead of studying what they’re doing, contemplate what they’re afraid of, too.

Pull the trigger. Read more…

Recommended: 5 Crowdfunding Steps Proven To Raise Money on GoFundMe

Oct 29: 4 Steps to Crowdfunding Success

The biggest problem that many small businesses throughout the United States face is how to secure startup or initial funding from traditional lenders. Since the 2008 financial meltdown, banks are under a lot of pressure to make safer loans, resulting in stricter underwriting guidelines and fewer loans being approved.

With the advent of crowdfunding providing a more accessible option, the amount of small businesses with crowdfunding campaigns has significantly increased. Read more…

Recommended: How To Turn Your Exit Page Into A Sales Opportunity

Oct 29: How to Promote Your Crowdfunding Project to 2,500,000 People for Only $20

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

Oct 29: 8 Key Steps to a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

Crowdfunding is a way of raising money for a new venture by soliciting small donations from many people online. The biggest platforms in the industry are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. In the last five years, crowdfunding has grown from a tool for off-beat bands to raise money from fans for an album they can’t afford to produce to a way for some really high tech inventors to get access to capital for their new, innovative startups.

Following is the checklist of 8 steps to prepare for your campaign.

1. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Tips For Using Promoted Posts To Get Customers Excited

Oct 29: Improve Your Mobile Advertising Campaign: 10 Tips

Figuring out how to use mobile ads for a startup or small business isn’t easy. Most entrepreneurs have struggled with online advertising, period. And adding mobile to the mix can seem confusing and expensive. But with so many people on their phones 24/7, neglecting to explore this new territory is a mistake. Read more…

Recommended: How To Make Social Media Marketing Success

Oct 29: 12 Proven Content Marketing Tricks to Maximize Traffic

Are you sick and tired of the same old content marketing tricks that just don’t seem to increase your traffic?

Today’s audiences are tired of the “same old, same old”, so the time is right to be innovative, take a few risks, and implement some all-new tactics into your strategy.

If you’re risk averse, never fear – while these tips may be unusual, they’ve been proven:

1. Read more…

Recommended: 5 Ways Entrepreneurs Who Take Vacations Are More Successful

Oct 29: Boost Summer Sales With These 4 Tips

Many people accept that a slowdown in sales is a fact of business life during the summer. Well, nothing could be further from the truth, and as a business owner you need to get out of that frame of mind.

A summer slowdown may be something many people want because they expect this to be a season for vacations when the living is easy. Read more…

Recommended: New to Crowdfunding? Here’s What to Expect.

Oct 29: How To Do More With Less – Smarter Content Marketing Strategies

The more you know about repurposing content, the more you realize you have a lot to work with. At the same time, the more you know about anything, the more you realize you have a lot to learn.

Dipping into your archive and giving a fresh take on quality pieces is a great way to extend your ROI, but it’s not effective to take the existing newsletter content and paste it into a blog post – it’s lazy. Read more…

Recommended: 10 Content Marketing Ideas to Promote your Small Business or Startup Company

Oct 29: 3 Social Media Tips For Business Owners

Gaffes on social networking sites can happen to the best of us. There are some very good lessons business owners can glean from common social media mistakes and apply to their own marketing efforts. Here are 3 of those lessons and tips:

1) Make it known to employees that social media is not just for fun. Read more…

Recommended: How to solve one marketing puzzle

Oct 29: How to Advertise Your Business to 2,500,000 People on 4 Social Networks for $20

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

Oct 29: How To Gain Clients Trust – 5 Tips

If you are the owner of a small business looking to increase your clientele, here are some tips on how to build a trusting relationship with your client.

Tip # 1: Be Upfront

How do you put your client at ease when he first comes to your home as a total stranger? It all starts with communication. Read more…

Recommended: 25 Instagram Marketing Tips for Business

Oct 29: What Entrepreneurs Need to Know About Equity Crowdfunding to Raise Money

Equity crowdfunding is the process whereby everyday people (the “crowd”) invest in an early-stage company, which is not listed on a stock market, in exchange for shares in that company. These shareholders have partial ownership of the company and stand to profit if the company does well.

For the first time, the JOBS act is allowing unsophisticated investors to purchase your stock. Read more…

Recommended: How To Avoid Summer Slowdowns, And Keep Growing Your Business

Oct 29: 4 Ways To Overcome Fear And Be More Confident

Ever experienced fear or doubt about your abilities? To the degree you can overcome your insecurities, you will experience freedom to be yourself and reach your full potential as an entrepreneur. The most important thing to understand is that everyone experiences these scary emotions to some degree, regardless of how confident and self-assured people may seem.

Follow these 4 tips to overcome fear and get to that next level in your business goals:

1) Don’t forget that it’s normal. Read more…

Recommended: 13 Marketing Tips When Using Social Networks

Oct 29: Why The Business Plan Is Still Useful For Startup Success

Some define a business plan as a formal document that takes a long time to create and isn’t flexible, doesn’t get reviewed and doesn’t get revised. Then they say a business plan isn’t useful.

That’s sort of like saying getting regular exercise isn’t good for you because some people overdo it and end up with joint damage.

It would be better to advocate a type of business planning that could be called lean business planning. Read more…

Recommended: Using Hashtags in Social Media Marketing

Oct 29: Does Your Marketer Pass These 6 Traits?

When you’re getting ready for a website redesign, you need to make sure that you partner with a certain kind of online marketing agency. Anyone can say they design websites nowadays; but not everyone can say they produce websites that look great, are easy to use, and have a real, measurable impact on your revenue stream.

Your website is your most valuable marketing asset. Read more…

Recommended: 9 Content Marketing Steps to Follow When You Have a Low Budget

Oct 28: How To Promote Your Startup On A Shoe-String Budget

What do smart entrepreneurs do different to ensure their business stays profitable? They do the simple things right. Simple things really, like finding cheap ways to get exposure, or hearing their customers out, or networking in the right places. With all this covered, the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) for every new customer falls low enough to make their business model sustainable in both the long and short run.

If you have a young business that’s losing steam fast compared to its rivals, it’s very likely you’re facing a competitor who has found inexpensive and effective ways to market itself to new customers. Read more…

Recommended: Small Businesses: How to avoid these 5 E-Marketing Mistakes

Oct 28: How to Promote Your Crowdfunding Project to 2,500,000 People for Only $20

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

Oct 28: How To Maximize The Power Of Twitter – 10 Lessons Learned.

With Twitter having more than 300 million user accounts, it has become an important network for companies to reach out to their customers. There are well-established and successful brands that have come up with best practices companies could emulate to attract a loyal following and transform customers into brand advocates.

Here are ten marketing lessons for successful utilization of Twitter:

1. Read more…

Recommended: How To Make Social Media Marketing Success

Oct 28: 5 Mobile Marketing Methods That Work

Marketing has gone mobile. Most shoppers use at least one mobile device to research and purchase products online. Maybe your small business doesn’t have a mobile-friendly site yet. But do you need one?

1: Determine whether you need a mobile site

Before you start developing a mobile site, figure out if you really need one. Read more…

Recommended: Using Hashtags in Social Media Marketing

Oct 28: 5 Ways to Start a Business Part-Time While Holding a Day Job Full-Time

You know you want to start a business, but you can’t shake those financial pressures – rent or a mortgage, a car payment and maybe you have kids. Even young people have responsibilities after all. But tack on the fact your business idea will surely take time to catch on, and starting up can seem even further out of reach.

You are a perfect candidate to become a part-time entrepreneur. Read more…

Recommended: How To Deal With The Risky Business Of Launching Your Own Startup

Oct 28: How To Deal With Setbacks

Resilient business owners have learned to apply three lessons that help them lead their companies successfully despite inevitable setbacks. Here they are:

1) Monitor your time, and stick to a schedule.

2) Focus on what’s most important.

3) Don’t give up. Read more…

Recommended: Uncommon Ways To Find Investors For Your Startup

Oct 28: How To Hire Great Employees As A New Manager

Hiring staff can be difficult as a new manager, and making bad choices can be disastrous. These 5 easy steps will help you find the right fit for your company:

1) Determine what you need.

Many people make the mistake of not clearly defining the skills needed before starting to interview. This can lead to hiring people because you like them or they’re impressive in an interview. Read more…

Recommended: Does Your Marketing Strategy Work For You?

Oct 28: The Real Reasons Why VC Investors Delete Your Emails

What should you include in an introductory email to a potential VC investor if your goal is to actually get them to open it and read it? Although every investor pitch and every investor is different, these 4 blunders are common to most of the unsuccessful ones:

1) The email has a worthless subject line.

Too often, entrepreneurs use boring, worthless subject lines in their investor pitches. Read more…

Recommended: What To Look For When Selecting A Good B2B Digital Marketing Agency

Oct 28: How to Promote Your Crowdfunding Project to 2,500,000 People for Only $20

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

Oct 28: Secrets Of Virgin Atlantic’s Marketing Success

Virgin Atlantic is a small airline with a big personality. This is how it lures customers from the big guys.

You may think Virgin Atlantic is a huge airline worldwide, but they’re not. Maybe they’re the No. 2 airline in the UK, but they don’t even hold a candle to United, American or Delta here in the U.S. Read more…

Recommended: 8 Key Steps to a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

Oct 28: Keeping Up with the Changing Face of Advertising

Advertising is changing at lightning speed with the internet. When businesses started flocking online, they found amazing opportunities to reach consumers outside of traditional media like print and television. But even in the last few years, those advertising options have shifted tremendously.

Gone are the days of the pop up – well, mostly. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Ways To Prevent A Mistake From Destroying Your Business

Oct 28: 3 Social Media Tips For Business Owners

Gaffes on social networking sites can happen to the best of us. There are some very good lessons business owners can glean from common social media mistakes and apply to their own marketing efforts. Here are 3 of those lessons and tips:

1) Make it known to employees that social media is not just for fun. Read more…

Recommended: 6 Smart Email Triggers for Marketing Automation

Oct 28: What To Look For When Selecting A Good B2B Digital Marketing Agency

In the competitive and increasingly saturated B2B market, it’s never been more important for you to have outstanding marketing strategies. Finding a digital marketing agency that specializes in B2B is a great way to boost results, as long as they are right for your company and sector.

How not to do it…and what to do instead

The most dangerous move you can make is choosing the first digital marketing agency that you come across. Read more…

Recommended: Why Startup Entrepreneurs Need To Be More Like Reporters

Oct 28: 8 Best Practices to Optimize Your Video Landing Page

There are a ton of benefits to having videos on your landing pages. For starters, videos are an easy type of content for your potential leads to consume (and retain), plus most people actually want a video to explain the product or service to them.

It’s important to note that videos are not the only thing you need to focus on when it comes to creating an optimized landing page that converts. Read more…

Recommended: Promote Your Business on a Tight Budget

Oct 27: The Choice: Google+ Vs. Facebook

Google+ is a nice social network that is quite different from Facebook in many ways but it was all the rage when it came out and people were waiting for e-mail invites to join the network. The initial buzz has been over for quite a while, and now it is time to really see if Google+ can overtake Facebook at some point and become a more popular and larger social network.

Are the Numbers Important?

At some point in the future the numbers may take Google+ over Facebook, but numbers are only one part of the equation. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Mistakes That Hurt Your Crowdfunding Campaign

Oct 27: How to Promote Your Crowdfunding Project to 2,500,000 People for Only $20

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

Oct 27: 4 Steps to Crowdfunding Success

The biggest problem that many small businesses throughout the United States face is how to secure startup or initial funding from traditional lenders. Since the 2008 financial meltdown, banks are under a lot of pressure to make safer loans, resulting in stricter underwriting guidelines and fewer loans being approved.

With the advent of crowdfunding providing a more accessible option, the amount of small businesses with crowdfunding campaigns has significantly increased. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Secrets To Marketing Your Small Business Successfully

Oct 27: 3 Steps for Marketers to Get More Out of Social Media Posts

The challenge of capturing the ROI of social media is almost as old as the Internet itself. The reason boils down to basic consumer behavior. For one, shoppers engage with brands at multiple touch points, across a range of devices. And new digital technologies are lowering the barrier for startups to enter the market.

This landscape is creating a fragmented data picture –
information often lives in silos between teams. Read more…

Recommended: Best Online Sites For Small Businesses To Advertise

Oct 27: Improve Your E-Mail Marketing – Follow These 10 Steps

Most brands have a “pretty decent” email marketing program, but could it be better? Take a look at these 11 things to try and improve your engagement.

1. Take a hard look at your preference strategy.

There are three tips on capturing preferences: ask them, observe them and group them (into categories). Read more…

Recommended: 3 Habits Of High-Performing Teams

Oct 27: Why Small Businesses Should Not Hire These 3 Types Of People

Even the most perceptive business owners can make a bad hire when they don’t pay attention to the right signs. Here are 3 personality types that can bring down your business and how you can spot them in an interview.

1) The Narcissist.

It’s easy to make the mistake of hiring a narcissist. They are often charismatic and radiate self-confidence. Read more…

Recommended: 5 Ways To Generate Content That Is King

Oct 27: How To Challenge And Beat The Big Boys In Local Sales

What should you do as a small, independent retailer when a major food chain, big-box store or national franchise becomes a direct competitor? All along you’ve been specializing in items that aren’t in the mainstream but sell well, and then some big outfit like Walmart or Amazon decides they’re going to hone in on your action.

When this happens, what can you as a specialty retailer do to remain in business and retain your dominance in any niche market?

Your first reaction might be to lower prices in order to compete with the big stores. Read more…

Recommended: Best Online Sites For Small Businesses To Advertise

Oct 27: How to Get Started with Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Most experts agree: 2017 was the year for influencer marketing. Most marketers planned to launch at least one influencer marketing campaign in 2017, and more in 2018. The reasons that this particular marketing strategy is surging right now are many. The first, and probably the largest reason is social proof.

According to research firm Yankelovich, Americans are exposed to 5,000 advertisements a day. Read more…

Recommended: Traditional Marketing And Content Marketing: Can They Co-Exist?

Oct 27: How to Advertise Your Business to 2,500,000 People on 4 Social Networks for $20

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

Oct 27: Is Google Threat to Social-Media Marketing?

Google is putting out its Wildfire. The seemingly harmonious relationship between the search engine giant and the social software platform is has come to an end after a partnership that lasted about 20 months.

As a part of Google, Wildfire’s aim was to help businesses improve their social media marketing efforts. Read more…

Recommended: How to Build Great Marketing Relationships for your Business

Oct 27: 2 Ways To Generate Quick Buzz For Your Business

Don’t you love when brands interact with you in a human, authentic way that leads to a satisfactory experience? That is, your problem is solved, and your needs are met.

What do we do when we have such an experience? Well, we talk about it. That is word-of-mouth buzz from social interaction that’s authentic and customer-service focused.

Here are 2 ways to generate this type of buzz for your business’ brand:

1) Communicate in a contextual way.

If a customer posts a negative message about your product or sends you a direct message on social media sites to request support, that immediately provides you with context for response. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Habits Of High-Performing Teams

Oct 27: 6 Smart Email Triggers for Marketing Automation

Triggered or targeted emails can be a great way to deliver the right content at the right time to the right people. A sincere thank you, a courteous confirmation, or a concerned abandoned cart message that automatically follows a specific behavior someone took on your website can be the difference between a very happy customer and losing a contact altogether.

As long as the automated email is relevant, timely, and provides value to the recipient, triggered emails can be used to save marketers a tremendous amount of time and, more importantly, better engage your contact database. Read more…

Recommended: Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Is Still Very Effective

Oct 27: 6 Fundraising Tips Most Startup Entrepreneurs Don’t Know

In reading the start-up and tech blogs these days, one would think investors are chomping at the bit to fund startups like yours. But as is true with most situations in life, you shouldn’t believe everything you read.

There are certainly examples of big and fast rounds and companies where money landed in a founder’s lap. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Ways to Market Your Bootstrapped Startup Online

Oct 27: One Man Marketing Department !!!

As a small business, or a one man (or woman) show, marketing can be downright difficult to tackle. Where do you start? What would a realistic marketing plan be? How can you get the most out of your time? These are all questions that small businesses face. Here’s how to rock it out as a one-person marketing department.

Set Realistic Goals:

We’ll just throw this out there – you’re not going to have the capabilities of Proctor & Gamble when it comes to your marketing efforts. Read more…

Recommended: 7 Steps to Boost Content Marketing Success

Oct 26: Don’t Make This Common Brainstorming Mistake That Leads to Failure

Imagine you’re leading a brainstorming session at your company. You want to come up with growth strategies for your startup, so you gather your team in a meeting room, generate lots of ideas, and choose the most promising one. Many small business owners use that approach, but unfortunately, it often doesn’t work. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Questions Entrepreneurs Must Answer To Become Successful