Small Business Shift

Google has just announced a new educational portal designed for small businesses. It’s to help businesses and their advisers better understand all Google’s offerings. In the search giant’s own words: …we hope that this collection of short videos, handouts, and resources will arm you with best practices and tips that you can use right away. The […]

I’ve written previously about why your business should and should not use Twitter. But a recent report from Exact Target really pins down one of the great things about the social network. As the report states: Twitter users are the most influential online consumers, and their influence spreads across all areas of the internet. It says […]

When you make an update to your Facebook Page, not all your fans will see it. For some pages, it can be so bad that less than 10% of your fans see the news. And it’s mostly because of Edgerank. What is Edgerank? Facebook users have many friends, and they may like numerous pages as […]

This great article at Slate asks the question: Why are restaurant websites so horrifically bad? The article discusses the overdone animation, slow page loads, difficult navigation, and general lack of easy-to-find content that plagues the industry. I think it’s true that the restaurant industry suffers from these issues even more than most, but it’s something […]

Google has just announced, via their Places Blog, a new twist to online reviews. For some time now, Google has personalized Places by prominently displaying reviews from people in your social circle (that Google knows about). I’ve written about my belief that this will be very important in the future, as more people review businesses […]

eMarketer highlights an interesting study from Hiscox – which shows low usage of social media by small businesses, and even less importance ascribed to the area. On the other hand, most viewed word-of-mouth as critical to their success. The article says: 50% of respondents said the marketing tool they could not do without was word-of-mouth. Just 4% […]

Is the information on your website out of date? Are you unsure how to create a blog? Do you not display prices because they might change? Then you could probably benefit from one feature every website should have. You need a website that can be easily updated, even by someone with no technical skill. Why […]

Time for a first website, or a redesign? I hear far too many stories of website projects gone wrong – and even among those that finish, plenty of small business sites are lacking key features, such as good photos of their company. Sometimes the problem is just poor preparation. Take these three steps before seeking […]

John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing has an excellent post this morning regarding community managers. He writes: Organizations fortunate enough to have forward thinking CEOs and marketing departments have even added the role of Community Manager to the org chart. This has become increasingly common, and fulfills an important role in today’s marketing world – […]

Local Visibility system has a quick article on Google Places character limits. He starts out mentioning that Google has an 80 character limit on titles for Google Places Pages. But then goes on to say: In terms of the maximum character length of your “business name,” you’ll be fine as long as you work within […]