Small Business

02 Apr

Posted at 14:34h in Small Business by
Marketing and PR today rely heavily on technology, but often finding the right person or firm to handle your IT needs can be challenging. Mike Holley from Chicago-based Switchfast Technologies provides some excellent advice in this post. Switchfast provides IT solutions uniquely tailored to the needs of small business. Outsourcing is one of the fastest growing trends in the small business world today, and for good reason. By outsourcing parts of their operations, small businesses almost always save money and often end up with higher quality service than they’d be able to afford otherwise. When one considers overhead and training associated with internal hiring, the amount of expertise that can be had for a given budget is much greater with an outsourced partner than a full time employee or team of employees. This is especially true in the field of IT, where quality technicians are paid high wages and it’s nearly impossible for an individual to be an expert in everything.

30 Mar

Posted at 15:56h in Small Business by
by Beth Graddon-Hodgson For some businesses, choosing a topic isn’t quite as easy. It’s always important to write with your target demographic in mind, but with a business that caters to a broad range of people like a catch-all online retail website; who are they and what do they care about? There are a number of questions that you can ask yourself when establishing a blog for your business. They are the ones that I go through to hone in on a specific topic area for a client who can go in any direction with their blog.

26 Mar

Posted at 11:09h in Public Relations, Small Business by
[caption id="attachment_1182" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Chinese symbols for fame"][/caption] Woo woo alert!! Readers, since you're so enamored with the Feng Shui tip about wearing red underwear to give you energy on TV, I thought I'd provide five ways to use the ancient Chinese art of feng shui to improve the results of your PR campaign. Think this is weird? The Chinese often refuse to erect a new office building in China until  it's been certified for Feng Shui. Here in this country, folks like Roger Green and Carole Hyder are in high demand for their feng shui workshops and consultations. When I did Carole's PR, people used to line up out the door at her book signings. First find the area of your office or home on what they call the Bagua that is the "fame" area. (It's basically the back middle area of your office) Then it's time to decorate.

23 Mar

Posted at 17:02h in Small Business, Social Media by
When starting a blog for your business the first thing you need is a topic. Obvious, perhaps, though you’d be surprised to learn the number of people who don’t think establishing a topic is essential. There’s a belief that if you just start writing, people will come. That might be true when writing a personal blog, but it doesn’t apply in business. With a business blog, you need to ATTRACT your audience. With a personal blog, you’ve already got people who have a vested interest in what you’ve got to say. Just because you work in a specific industry and have knowledge of your craft doesn’t mean you’ve got a voice that people want to listen to just for the sake of it. You’ve got to give them something to lure them in and keep them coming back. That all begins with picking the right topic.

16 Mar

Posted at 09:31h in Small Business by
[caption id="attachment_1150" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Beth Graddon-Hodgson"][/caption] After Beth Graddon-Hodgson wrote her last guest post I realized there wasn't much out there in terms of advice for companies wanting to use blogging as a marketing tool outside of SEO. How do ou REALLY use a blog to inject your brand voice into the growing global conversation? I'm very pleased to tell you that Beth has agreed to write a weekly post for the Wax blog on topics concerning just that...how does a business use a blog to their best advantage? I can't wait to learn more. You might wonder about Beth's experience blogging for business...I asked her to tell us a bit about herself. You can also follow Beth on Twitter

26 Feb

Posted at 13:59h in Public Relations, Small Business by
In honor of being incredibly lazy this week, here's one of my fave 2009 posts - the last Friday of every month I'll throw a repeat of one of the more popular posts, just in case you missed it! [stextbox id="alert" color="000000" bgcolor="17e8e8"] A product, service or book is probably the greatest thing in the world - to its creator. But when an editor or producers says "pass" it's the publicist who has to tell the client. Sometimes ZERO  media are interested. And for anyone who has written a book, started a business or provided a service, that can be a pretty personally hurtful message no matter how carefully it's couched. For me, it's the equivalent of having to tell clients "your baby is ugly" 95% of the time, without hurting their feelings. Nearly impossible.

17 Jan

Posted at 18:09h in Integrated Marketing, Small Business by
There are a lot of business owners that despise marketing as much as some people despise working out. Just like going to the gym, it's easier to stay on track if you've got a someone you're accountable to. Some business owners use groups on social media sites like LinkedIn to ask questions and find guidance but I think it's important to have a live person you know that can be a sounding board for your marketing activities. There are tons of great networking groups where you can find potential contacts. Here's a list of some of the small business social networks you can tap into locally to help find your marketing workout buddy.