There’s no magic bullet when it comes to getting press, but these tips will point you in the right direction.

By Scott Steinberg

It’s every entrepreneur’s dream: to see your business’s name in lights. But with thousands of companies competing in hundreds of verticals for the same limited number of column inches, blog posts and precious seconds of airtime, let’s level: It’s not easy to score the precious publicity boost that placement in your local newspaper or an influential website can provide. Nor, for that matter, is avoiding the trap of becoming yesterday’s news.

However, the upside for even the leanest startups is that these days, it doesn’t take massive marketing and public relations budgets or lavish events to generate serious ink. Mind you, there’s no one simple strategy for breaking into every outlet–each is actually a broad collection of self-contained sections staffed by a unique team of reporters with various backgrounds, interests and needs. But employ the simple tips below, and who knows? You too could soon be making headlines.

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Use these tips to maximize your time and get the most out of your online efforts.

By Ivan Misner

People have a tendency to get online at random times and start clicking away. Then something mysterious happens to the space-time continuum, and all of a sudden two hours goes and they have nothing to show for it. But it’s fairly easy to avoid falling victim to that trap–have a plan and stick to it!

The key to success with social media is to outline a strategy which considers the amount of time you can realistically dedicate each day to your online marketing efforts. If you plan your activities, use time-saving tools and make sure your ROI expectations are reasonable you’ll be in a good position to succeed at social networking.

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We analyze 4 online marketing tools designed to strengthen your relationship with customers.

By Sherry Prescott-Willis

What are your top strategies for keeping in front of customers in 2010? Chances are, as an entrepreneur, you’re looking to connect with your customers faster and more easily. You want to strengthen relationships with customers to help drive and increase your revenue. You can accomplish that with an online marketing tool. The key is to find the best tool for you and your business.

A lot of online tools claim to make you a better, faster marketer. Many also promise to help you easily connect with your customers. So, how do you choose? The trick is to pick online marketing tools that not only help you reach your customers, but also are really easy for you to use.

Here are the criteria I use to assess marketing tools for entrepreneurs:

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You know that commenting on blogs is a great way to extend your presence online, meet other bloggers, business owners, and potential customers, and ultimately drive more traffic to your own blog and website.

But what makes a good blog comment? How do you go about “joining the conversation,” as multitudes of well-meaning people are constantly haranguing you to do? Is there a science to it? An established theorem of blog commenting best practices?  What’s a business blogger to do?

Let’s take a simple, mathematical approach to commenting on other people’s blogs.

Add

Add something useful, new, or interesting to the conversation. Easier said than done, to be sure. But avoid leaving comments just for the sake of leaving comments, especially those that add nothing to the topic at hand.

Example: While everybody likes to be agreed with, try to go beyond a simple “I agree” in your comments. What exactly do you agree with? Was one of the points made by the blogger more persuasive than the others? Which arguments were less persuasive?

Added benefit: Blog comments offer a great opportunity to show more of your human face to the readers in your space. A personal anecdote goes a long way in contributing something truly unique and valuable to the conversation that only you can add. Share something of yourself, your background, your expertise.

Subtract

Subtract any gratuitous self-promotion from your blog comments. If you have a truly relevant blog post on your own site, then by all means refer to it, but only after summarizing how and why it is relevant to the author’s post. Avoid talking about your own products and services on other people’s blogs.

Example: If you sell accounting software, and the author of another blog writes about a tricky tax question that your software helps answer, try to answer the question in a simple, layman-friendly way and help the readers of this blog understand the issue better.

Added benefit: You’ve just uncovered a blog post that is dying to be written on your own blog. Write in more detail on your own site about how to approach the tricky tax question, and link back to the article that sparked the idea for the post.

Multiply

Multiply the positive effect of your comments by referring (and linking, where appropriate) to the blogs, comments, and contributions of others.  Draw connections and parallels where others have not yet pointed them out. Promote the good work and insights of other commenters, and be specific about what it is you value about their contributions.

Example: If you sell signs and banners, visit the blogs of graphic designers and artists who design for the commercial sector. Talk about what you admire in their designs, and why these principles are important in business signs and marketing.

Added benefit: You might find some bloggers in a related space who might be interested in guest blogging for your site. Adding diverse voices to your blog increases the readability and potential audience for your blog by a surprising amount.

Divide

Divide your attention among blogs in a number of different spaces — not just the one your own blog occupies.  What types of blogs do your customers enjoy, when they are not thinking fondly of you and your products and services?

Seek out a number of different worlds that might be of interest to your customers, your partners, your vendors, your friends. Visit these blogs as frequently as you do those in your own segment (if not more), and contribute thoughtful remarks to these conversations as well. Avoid confining yourself to your own little “echo chamber” by frequenting new and exciting different neighborhoods in the blogosphere.

Example: If you sell pools, and write a blog about pools and hot tubs, find some blogs that discuss outdoor home decorating, home gardening, lawn sports, and other related leisure activities.

Additional benefit: These sites might give you ideas for posts of your own: what kind of furniture do you need when you own a pool? What kind of food might you serve poolside this summer? What are some tips for keeping your skin safe from UV rays during the warmer months?

Add, subtract, multiply, and divide. It all adds up to a great business blog, and to creating a strong and helpful presence in the blogosphere that builds your brand’s reputation, authority, and good will.

Post written by Beth Dunn, a member of the Inbound Marketing Consultant team at HubSpot. Beth also blogs at www.bethdunn.org and An Accomplished Young Lady.

Image by Silenceofnight

Posted by Rick Burnes

So you’ve been listening to your techie nephew talk about Twitter and Facebook. You understand the appeal from the social and networking perspectives — but you’re still stuck on one question: What, exactly, can social media do for your business?

If you look at our experience here at HubSpot, one answer is clear: leads.

The graph above represents leads generated on HubSpot.com from visitors who were originally referred to HubSpot via a social media platform like Twitter or Facebook between April 2008 and March 2010. The data is clear: Social media is a significant, growing lead generation channel.

This is by no means our biggest lead channel, but it’s also nothing to sneeze at. Based on the leads alone, social media is worth the time we put into it.

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Wondering how the rampant innovations in search and social media are impacting SEO best practices?

HubSpot recently got input from Aaron Khalow of Online Marketing Summit on the evolution of SEO and what it means for SMBs.  To continue the conversation, we asked two more internet marketing luminaries to weigh in on the topic.

Sage Lewis of SageRock, a digital marketing agency, and Nathan Thompson of Marketing Experiments both agreed that as search gets more relevant through social media and real time results, and Page Rank is declining in importance as the metric of note.

Sage used multi-media to his advantage and answered our questions on the evolution of SEO via video.   Ultimately, he says that “If you optimize for the visitor, your site will naturally be optimized for search engines,” emphasizing that a modern, ethical approach to content creation and optimization is key and is driving legitimacy in SEO.

Though Sage’s agency perspective is similar, the Marketing Experiments approach is a little different.  In fact, Nathan is a marketer after my own heart and ties his responses back to ROI.

How have you seen SEO as a practice change over the last few years?

For better or worse, SEO efforts are becoming more sophisticated over time. Most SEO “best practices” have been so widely circulated that just having keywords in your copy and title tags isn’t going to put you at the top of Google. At the same time, there is still a lot of bad information floating around, so getting the basics right is necessary just to play the game.

As more people have started to see the value of SEO, and invest more time and money into SEO, it has become increasingly important to take a testing approach to your SEO efforts. Understanding how, why and when your efforts affect your rankings is just as important as your rank itself. Some of this comes from research, but even more of it comes from watching those who rank above you and from your own experimentation.

Is search engine rank (page rank) important?  Why or Why not?

It’s a question of ROI.

If you’re happy with your current level of traffic, leads, traffic quality, etc. then rank probably doesn’t matter much to you, unless it changes. If all of your high-converting traffic comes from affiliates or PPC advertising, then rank probably doesn’t mean much to you. But if improving your rank is going to provide you an ROI based on increased leads, more qualified traffic, etc. then rank probably matters to you a lot. Saying you don’t want to rank at the top spot for one of your primary keywords is like saying you don’t care if you win the lottery. While you’re probably ok without it, you’d probably be really ok with it, too.  The bigger question is, “when is it feasible, considering your time and resources, to focus on achieving one more spot, versus focusing on your optimization efforts to increase sales with the traffic you already have?” Like any other business decision, it comes down to priorities and ROI.

How do you think localization and personalization have changed the relevance of search ranks?

As someone using search engines to find information, localization and personalization provides me with results that are more relevant to me, making me a more motivated, more qualified lead when I click on results and arrive at a site. As a site owner this makes the traffic arriving from these results even more valuable to me. I think this has increased the relevance of search ranks and places even more importance on SEO efforts.

What will be the impact of social media inclusion in search?

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Useful strategies to help you maximize your campaigns and save money.
By Robert W. Bly

Most small businesses have modest marketing budgets, which means you have to make every dollar count. Here are 5 ways to get big results from a small budget:

1. First, use your ads for more than just space advertising. Ads are expensive to produce and expensive to run. But there are ways to get your advertising message in your prospect’s hands at a fraction of the cost of space advertising.

The least expensive is to order an ample supply of reprints and distribute them to customers and prospects every chance you get. When you send literature in response to an inquiry, include a copy of the ad in the package. This reminds a prospect of the reason he responded in the first place and reinforces the original message.

Distribute ads internally to other departments–engineering, production, sales, customer service and R&D–to keep them up to date on your latest marketing and promotional efforts. Make sure your salespeople receive an extra supply of reprints and are encouraged to include a reprint when they write to or visit their customers.

Turn the ad into a product data sheet by adding technical specifications and additional product information to the back of the ad reprint. This eliminates the expense of creating a new layout from scratch. And it makes good advertising sense, because the reader gets double exposure to your advertising message.

Ad reprints can be used as inexpensive direct mail pieces. You can mail the reprints along with a reply card and a sales letter. Unlike the ad, which is “cast in concrete,” the letter is easily and inexpensively tailored to specific markets and customer groups.

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Give your business a boost with these no-cost marketing resources.

By Barbara Findlay Schenck

Are your 2010 marketing goals and plans ready to go? Or, are you working so hard to run your business, navigate consumer and marketplace changes, make payroll, and keep your business afloat that you’re greeting the second quarter without a blueprint for how you’ll steer its future? If so, take action immediately to get your marketing plan in order. This lineup of free resources will ease the process.

Market research MapStats. Don’t rely on guesswork to determine whether the region you serve can support your growth goals or whether new markets are good choices for business expansion. Instead, tap into government-assembled facts about any U.S. state, county, city or congressional district. With just a few keyboard clicks you’ll see the region’s population and demographics, as well as facts about growth, housing, income, employment, number and nature of businesses, and business activity by sector. Through this single source you can gather valuable information to weigh as you plot your next marketing moves.

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Search engine marketing can be costly, get the most out of your efforts.

Among web marketers, it is the big debate: SEM versus SEO. Sound like just a bunch of letters to you?

If you owned a web site, you wouldn’t think so. SEO stands for search engine optimization, a process that seeks to boost a site’s traffic by helping it rise within a search engine’s organic, or un-paid, search results. It is often seen as the Holy Grail for internet marketers, as people tend to click those links over their paid counterparts. However, the conversion rate–that is, the number of shoppers that turn from browsers to buyers–tends to be lower in organic search listings.

Search engine marketing, popularly referred to as pay-per-click, on the other hand, is a form of internet marketing that promotes websites on search engine result pages through paid placement (In search engines, these links appear on the right side of the screen or they’re highlighted at the top of organic search results.) The conversion rate from these paid links is 2.03 percent versus 1.26 percent from organic links, according a 2009 study from Engine Ready, an internet marketing company in San Diego. What’s more, those clicking over from sponsored links also tend to spend more. According to the study, those who clicked through a paid link spent on average $11 more, or $117.06 versus $106.64, than those who traveled to sites via un-paid links.

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Optimize your site’s search engine ranking with video
By Mikal Belicove   |   Entrepreneur Magazine - February 2010

Because video has become the new darling of search engines, many startups are rushing to create and post video on their websites. Just run a Google or Bing search on any topic, and links to video clips pop up right on page one. The reason for this is that search engines are tripping over themselves to provide blended search results­–links to news, blog posts, photos, video and other specialized content all mixed together. To ensure video is included in the results, search engines give them preferential treatment.

This trend presents startups that are able to produce quality video content with tremendous search engine optimization (SEO) opportunities. In fact, Forrester Research reports that compared with standard SEO techniques, a properly submitted video is 50 times more likely to achieve a first-page Google ranking. And because video is in such short supply, relative to other web-based content, the competition for search engine attention is less fierce.

Many startups and entrepreneurs are not yet taking full advantage of this opportunity. They are not using web-based video, are disregarding video SEO, or are trying but doing it all wrong.

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