Are you wondering if blogging is a good strategy to use by local small business owners?

In today’s post, I’m posting an interview with team leader, Lynette Chandler from BlogEnergizer. Recently, my good friends at BlogEnergizer have offered to write an exclusive interview for my readers and followers. so here’s the interview with Lynette, and I hope you’ll find lots of good information in it.

By the way, don’t forget to vote for me over at BlogEnergizer…the interview with the most votes will win some cool prizes.

Question 1: Would you recommend blogging to local businesses?

Yes. Perhaps not in the fast and furious pace like a regular blog, but using a blog as a tool to easily manage their sites and to keep customers and potential customers informed.

Question 2: Why do you think local businesses should use blogging as a marketing tool?

Because it is a low cost promotional tool. It doesn’t cost that much to get started and it can last for a long time too if kept up. I also think it it is a great way to begin the relationship building process.

Question 3: How they can profit from promoting their blog to their local visitors?

The obvious ways are to use the blog to let people know of new projects they are working, news, updates, deals, specials.

But beyond that, it can be used for customer service when you provide expert advise, tips, ideas, notification of closings, wait time or appointment schedule. People are more comfortable with a business they feel they know. This is what I meant before when talking about beginning to build the relationship.

Here’s a great example. I need to order a floral bouquet. New pictures of what they have done for their customers recently, what to expect when I go to their store and ideas or tips what to say in the card and keep the flowers fresh go a long way. At least if would help me get comfortable with them.

Question 4: Is blogging a must have strategy to any local business or is it more suitable for certain niches then others?

I think any business can benefit. A butcher can give tips how to best cook beef tips, A nail salon can show pictures of their work a pleased customer, A garage can provide seasonal maintenance tips, A nursery can talk about what to do with plants over the winter and landscaping project using their products during spring/summer, A photographer can provide information on the do’s and don’ts when coming in for a photo shoot. I think you get the idea here.

They don’t have to be updated daily or even weekly like what you’d expect a regular blog. Customers know these businesses are busy helping and serving their customers but I think it helps the customers out to see something current. Something new for the month.

Question 5: We all know that business owners are very busy people…so is it better for them to outsource the blogging strategy all together?

I would. But I would also want to occasionally put up something in my own voice on it. It could be a video update just to keep it personable and real. But you’d have to find a good company who can come up with updates that reflect your businesses culture and perhaps more importantly know the ropes of blogging because there are sometimes nuances to blogging. It is not enough to just put up a post. When people react to the post via comments and recommendations, whoever is managing the blog will need to know how respond.

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Email Marketing for local businesses is all about connecting with your target audience by offering them high quality information and consistently working towards building a strong honest relationship with each and every subscriber in your list database.

Email Marketing is also called list building which helps facilitate the process of converting subscribers into active customers. Indeed, once your prospect has been added to your mailing list, you are able to develop a relationship with them by communicating with them directly through your follow-up email broadcasts.

Now, the way you collect leads is by adding an «opt-in form» to your web pages that includes text fields such as a visitor’s full name and email address, and acts as the doorway into your email automated system called autoresponder.

These opt-in boxes are generated by your autoresponder provider, with just a few clicks of your mouse, and are embedded into the HTML code of your web pages.

As an example, and through the autoresponder that I use and recommend, each time a visitor to my web page enters in their name and email address, they are automatically added to my mailing list database, and become a subscriber of my newsletter. Once these subscribers are a confirmed members of my list, I’m authorized to send them follow up emails that offer high quality information, such as articles, reports, links to blog posts, videos and other information and resources that your subscribers would find useful.

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If you were to open a small store in your town, you would do so only because you felt there was a real demand for what you had to sell. If there were plenty of other stores already selling the same item that you wanted to sell, you wouldn’t open a store, would you? Well, plenty of people do that every single day on the internet and because they have no small business marketing strategy, they fail.

The real reason that most people invent a product or start up a business is because they have a need that is not being fulfilled. People invent products because the stores don’t have what they need or want. People open stores because they can’t find certain products in their local area. In many ways, this is similar to niche marketing. By finding a “niche”, or small segment of the market that is untouched, you build yourself a little corner that is all yours.

A small business marketing strategy that does work online focuses on just that – niche marketing. If you have a service or product that you know no one else has, then there are probably many others just like you who will want to buy it. Once you have a very specific item, then you need to go out there and figure out how to find ways to get people to buy it. In most cases, you can’t just blanket the world with ads, since most people will not want your product, but there is a high percentage of very specific people who will – and you have to find them.

Developing a small business marketing strategy is integral to the success of your business. If you “fail to plan, you plan to fail” and nowhere else is that truer than on the internet right now.

Click Here For The #1 Secrets Most Small Business Owners Will NEVER Know About Boosting Their Business On The Internet!

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When most websites go up for the first time, they do so with no online marketing and promotion plan in place, whatsoever. If you were going to start a bricks and mortar business, you wouldn’t just open up shop and hope that people found you! You would have a business plan, a marketing plan, and many ways to promote your business already in place before you ever opened your doors. Yet, when people start an online business, they just slap up a website and hope for the best.

One reason that many people don’t have an online marketing and promotion plan in place is because they really don’t know what they are doing. They may know how to build a website, or they may know about their product or service, but they don’t know about business, advertising, marketing, or even how the internet works as a whole.

The truth is that if you put up your website without a plan, you will probably not have much success at all. You will blame your failure on your product, but it will have more to do with not having an online marketing and promotion plan than anything else. When you put up your website, or even before the website ever gets built, you have to have a good handle on your market, if it is focused enough, who your customers are, where and how they can be reached, and how much they will be willing to spend.

Once you have figured out all of these, then you can go out hunting for visitors, but until then, you need to really spend time focused on what your message is, who your customers are, what you are selling, and how you are going to get out there and find the customers who need what you have.4

Click Here For The #1 Secrets Most Small Business Owners Will NEVER Know About Boosting Their Business On The Internet!

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Everyone on the web is trying to get traffic these days, but you need more than clicks coming your way. You need people who are seriously interested in what you have to say and the product or service that you are trying to sell. You can spend all you want on paying for pay-per-click ads, but you may not get the type of traffic that you want. One way to increase your qualified traffic and get people who you know are already interested in you is by trying some of the new video marketing concepts.

People have been making home videos for years, but only in the past year or so has this little hobby been paying off. If you have a small business that you are trying to promote online, then you might want to try video marketing concepts as part of your overall business marketing plan.
One way you can promote your business is by making yourself the expert. By giving yourself the authority to tell others how to do something, they will come to you when they need more help. Produce a video showing you at work, doing something, giving advice, or answering a common question in your field and the video will show up in the search results of your specified keywords.

You can also add your videos on Youtube or other social marketing websites and hope that they become viral. This will ensure that your videos are seen around the world by people who are interested in what you do. There are many new video marketing concepts coming along every day, and by taking advantage of video in your marketing plan, you will have more people finding you. It’s a great way to get new customers and establish your brand name and sense of expertise.

Click Here For The #1 Secrets Most Small Business Owners Will NEVER Know About Boosting Their Business On The Internet!

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When you have an online business, it is vital that you get your name out there as quickly and as often as you can. Sometimes, finding affordable online marketing opportunities can seem close to impossible as you are constantly hit with people trying to sell you ways to get your product or service noticed.

The good news is that there are affordable online marketing ways to get noticed and to get traffic – and do it quickly. Unlike in the non-online world where you really do have to pay a lot for an advertisement in the Yellow Pages, online you don’t have to do that. You can get traffic to your site affordable, and often free, by taking advantage of various linking techniques.

One affordable online marketing technique that works all the time is getting your website and all of its pages into the search engines. It may seem difficult at first, but once they are there, you will get traffic. There are several techniques to do this and get your pages up at the top of the listings (which is very important), and do it without having to pay the search engines any money. You may also enlist the help of companies that will help you get your results to the top of the listings on all the major search engines.

Another way to get noticed is to create promotional videos that will turn up in search engine results. These are becoming almost as possible as text links, and give viewers something to see instead of just something to click on. They give you the opportunity to establish your expertise, your brand, and your message, while getting the visual attention of the searcher. Online videos are becoming a popular way of getting attention, getting traffic, and making more online sales.

Click Here For The #1 Secrets Most Small Business Owners Will NEVER Know About Boosting Their Business On The Internet!

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Regardless of the type of online business you have, it is absolutely vital that you have an online small business marketing plan in place before you launch you website, otherwise you will wasting a lot of your time and probably money, too. No business should be launched without a well-thought out and developed plan in place, to ensure your future success.

One of the best things you can do when you developing your online small business marketing plan is base it on other companies online that are doing somewhat similar things to what you are trying to do. Learn about their company, where they advertise, how they get their customers, and how they follow through with their leads. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, why not learn what worked for them and just copy it?

Your online small business marketing plan deserves a good look-through by someone else, too. Don’t just write it and implement it! Have other people who are involved in online businesses review what you have planned and they may see either glaring mistakes, or have small additions to your plan that will make it even more successful.

In the old days, when you wanted to start a real business on your local street corner, you had to have a plan to present to the banker, to the people funding your business, and even to your own family. You should have the same kind of plan ready for your online business, too. By treating your online business like a business – instead of a hobby like many people do – you will have a better chance of making a real success out of it. You can make a living online with your business, if you go about it the right way and have a plan for success when you begin.

Click Here For The #1 Secrets Most Small Business Owners Will NEVER Know About Boosting Their Business On The Internet!

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Whether you have an online business or one that you run from the local main street, you will still experience great benefits of online marketing if you invest the time and energy in setting it up the right way. Many people feel that it is only worth advertising online if you are doing business online, too, but that is not correct. No matter what kind of business you have, you will always get more customers and develop a much better brand presence by putting your business online, too.

The benefits of online marketing often don’t start to show themselves for a few weeks or months. It can take awhile to saturate the market and get your name out there, but there are certainly ways to do it so that you start to feel the benefits sooner. One way of doing this is by using search engine marketing to bring targeted customers to your website.

In the old days, you could just slap up a website and people would find you, but the internet is so crowded now, that you can’t rely on them finding you by accident – you need to go out and find them. By putting your ads in search engine results, you will be getting in touch with people who are looking for businesses just like yours.

One of the other benefits of online marketing is that you can start seeing sales almost immediately, and often times without having to pay any money upfront. Unlike a normal business where you would have to rent a store and fill it with products, when you have an online store, you don’t have to buy anything until it is sold. If you are selling informational or e-books, then you never have to buy anything in the first place! It is an affordable and easy way to do business.

Click Here For The #1 Secrets Most Small Business Owners Will NEVER Know About Boosting Their Business On The Internet!

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When you have a small business, you are a virtual workhorse, trying to keep track of all parts of your business – from making the products or doing the service, keeping the books, advertising, marketing and so much more. As a small business owner, you may not think that online marketing for small business will benefit you, but it will.

In the beginning days of the internet, websites were used as a means of presenting an online brochure to the world. If you had a service as your small business, then you put up a website, gave visitors your email address or phone number, and they contacted you in the regular way. But now, an online brochure is not enough and you have to give people functionality. You have to really be able to push your business and that is why online marketing for small business is so important.

There are two steps to getting more business out of the internet. First of all, you have to be able to get people to your website. Secondly, you have to be able to sell them something when they get there. Many people are good at one of these, but not the other. The key is to make sure you have all of your bases covered.

Online marketing for small business will allow you to bring more people to your doors – both the virtual door of your website, and the physical place where you go business. It will also make sure that the leads you do get are more qualified. Instead of spending all day dealing with potential customers who are just window shopping for products that may or may not be like yours, you will be only dealing with people who have specifically sought you out because of what you have to offer.

Click Here For The #1 Secrets Most Small Business Owners Will NEVER Know About Boosting Their Business On The Internet!

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As you become more familiar with the internet world, you will probably be asking yourself what is online marketing. We have all grown up in a world where we recognize marketing or advertising when we see it – on television, on the radio, and in newspapers and magazines, but what is online marketing?

When you browse throughout the internet, you will start to see advertisements on the sidebars, and across the top of your browser window. This is online marketing at work. Every time one of those ads appears on your computer, someone is getting paid, money is changing hands.

If you go to Google and search for a phrase, the results page will be a conglomeration of real search results mixed with advertisements that people have paid to have placed at the top of the list. What you are seeing are not true search results, but a list of paid advertising first, followed by natural search results.

If you have a product or service that you want people to buy, whether it is online or not, you need to know what is online marketing. You need to understand how to get your ads out there in front of the right people at the right time, and there are very interesting ways of doing just that. In fact, no other media is as effective as the internet in terms of putting the right product in front of the right person at the right time. When someone is looking for an answer, there you are!

Online marketing has got to be an integral part of your overall marketing plan, even if you do business in person, such as in a restaurant or local store. People need to know how to find you, how to compare you to other businesses, and read reviews by real people about what you have to offer.

Click Here For The #1 Secrets Most Small Business Owners Will NEVER Know About Boosting Their Business On The Internet!

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