Think of your small business as if it were a local celebrity. The business has a place in the community, most people are aware of its presence and its activities and there is a certain image and reputation this business must uphold for the people of that community to continue to support that business. Public Relations (PR) is just as important to a small business as it is to a celebrity. How wonderful then, that the return on PR investments is among the best in the marketing business.

Many Kinds of Marketing

When owning or running a small business, there are many forms of marketing available. There is direct mail marketing, e-mail marketing, advertising campaigns; however, often times the least considered option is a simple Public Relations (PR) campaign. PR is too often considered a minor expense with little to no return on investment (ROI). This could not be farther from the truth.

When it comes time to decide how to reinvest in your business, consider PR first. Based on recent studies, it has been shown to be the most effective form of marketing per dollar spent. It is also among some of the least expensive marketing you can conduct, courtesy of many of today’s modern technologies. How then, as a small business, with limited resources, can a full-scale PR campaign be conducted? It’s easier than you might think.

PR On The Cheap

Advertising and marketing does not come cheap. Be it direct mail marketing, TV advertisements, even the hiring of a consultant; every expense related to marketing can be a crippling expenditure for a small business. PR, however, can be a welcome relief to many small businesses when the ROI is quite high and the cost to conduct a PR campaign can cost very little, or even just the cost of an Internet connection.

With the advent of seemingly ubiquitous Internet connectivity, a small business can literally always be connected to its community and its customers. Taking advantage of this is quite easy and can be done with any Smartphone or computer with an Internet connection. Creating a Facebook profile for a business is a fast, cheap and easy way to start to give your business an online image.

Be specific when describing your business on your Facebook page and be sure to include any links to the business’s website. With Facebook, you can also link together your profile with your business’s Twitter page. Twitter will allow you to constantly stay in contact with your customer and community base with short updates about sales, promotions, all the while conveying a tone that defines the kind of store you are. On the business website, consider a Blog where the business can comment on industry-related issues, news and even showcase sales there as well.

All of these tools – Facebook, Twitter, Blogs/Websites can be created for free or for very little investment, all the while not requiring additional workforce or consultancy be hired to complete. As far as Public Relations go, these are among the most effective ways of communicating with the public as many already use these tools on a daily basis.

In the end, PR is a perfect marketing solution for small business. It has a high return, is fast to complete and is very cheap. Small businesses are a part of the community and must present an image accordingly. Consider how wonderful it would be if a local business offered a promotion over its Twitter page based on the current score of a local high school football game. The possibilities are endless.

This article was written by William from Home Loan Finder. Visit the Home Loan Finder website for a range of articles to help you find the right home loan for your needs.

Are you using guest blogging to promote your business? If no, then you might be missing on something really big as far as your marketing effort is concerned. This article will provide 5 ways that you can benefit from guest blogging.

Here they are…

Reputation Building

The first advantage of guest blogging is that it can help you build your brand on the internet. Indeed, by publishing content on some authority sites you can help other people become acquainted to your brand and hence build a reputation online. But, for this to happen, you will need to make sure that your articles are really useful and that they really add value for your readers. After a short while people will begin to consider you as an expert in the field.

Massive Traffic

Another advantage of guest blogging is that it can help you get some really good traffic without relying solely on the search engines. Normally if your post is good enough, people will be interested to visit your site in order to learn more about you. And, if you published your post in some related sites you will be in a position to get some targeted traffic that may boost your sales. This benefit of guest blogging can be really useful for new blogs that have yet to get a ranking in the search engines.

New Market

Guest blogging can also help you target a market that you may have thought impossible before. By guest posting on some other blogs, you may be able to place your product in front of people that you would not have considered before. This can help you generate some new ideas that may be helpful when it comes to developing your business.

SEO

If you are a seasoned internet marketer you will know that the whole SEO game revolves around backlinks. Backlinks from real blogs that have real traffic can be really useful when it comes to boosting your site in the SERPs. This is why it might be useful that you look for blogs that have high PR and Alexa rank in order to get the most benefit.

Guest blogging can also be a useful alternative to article submissions. Following the Google Panda update, article directories have lost some of their effectiveness, and guest blogging can be a capable replacement when it comes to link building.

Social Media Benefits

Another advantage associated with guest blogging is that it allows you to take advantage of the host blog’s strength in social media. In the majority of cases, your article will be shared to the host blog’s Twitter followers or Facebook Fanpage, thus allowing you to take advantage of the site’s strength with social media sites. One idea will be to make it easy for visitors to share your content across social media sites. Place your Twitter and Facebook button in a visible position to encourage the sharing of your site on the different social media sites.

New Contacts

Guest blogging can also be instrumental when it comes to making new contacts. This can indeed create some opportunities for you to meet new people – not only fellow webmasters but also some readers of the host blogs. This can be a great opportunity for you to meet some other business professionals that might be interested in a possible joint-venture.

Guest blogging can be really effective when it comes to promoting your business online. It can help your site get instant traffic, break into new markets, improve your SERPs and also allow you to increase your social media reach. Whatever your business might be, you are definitely going to benefit from guest blogging.

About the Author

Robert Bellarmine is the writer behind Visitask.com where he covers topics related to project management and other management topics.

The following is a guest post by Bill Post. If you would like to write for this blog, please check out the guidelines here.

Business cards have been around for as long as business itself. Some historians trace the origins of modern-day business cards to 15th century China. By the 17th century, “visiting cards” or “calling cards” became a staple among European aristocrats as a way of announcing the arrival of a distinguished guest or introducing visitors. In the 18th and 19th centuries, guests were expected to present small, attractive cards to their hosts as a means of identification and as a sign of respect. Although the popularity of these formal greeting cards began to wane with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the need to exchange personal information for business purposes increased exponentially by the turn of the 20th century. As a result, for several generations, the ritual of swapping business cards has emerged as the most common sign that a connection has been made between professionals.

As one of the mainstays of modern business, the practice of exchanging business cards is likely around to stay. After all, business cards provide useful information, including contact numbers, email addresses, physical addresses and web addresses, and they’re often a means of making a first impression with a business contact. However, advances in technology are increasingly providing us with numerous electronic ways to supplement the use of traditional paper business cards. But fear not. Although social conventions now dictate that we communicate electronically, many of these ways of supplementing the traditional business card cost little or nothing, they have little or no impact on the environment, and you won’t have to place a new order to restock on these.

Let’s take a look at them.

Modern Business Card Alternatives

Email

One of the easiest ways to distribute your professional information is via email. No professional should ever send an email without ensuring that a signature appears at the end of the message. Those signatures should detail your business or company’s name, your address, contact numbers, and website (much like the standard information that appears on a traditional business card).

Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites provide an invaluable forum for providing detailed professional information that won’t easily fit onto a conventional business card. For example, although Facebook wasn’t originally conceived of as a place to advertise or make professional connections, savvy users create Facebook profiles and fan pages for their businesses at no cost. LinkedIn, a site catering to those specifically interested in exchanging professional information, also provides a virtual path to communicating with colleagues and connecting with people you’ve met in the past. In addition, although the information available to be shared on Google Profile is comparatively basic, that service represents one more opportunity to construct a professional online image for yourself or your business.

Cell Phones

These days, everyone you meet will have a cell phone handy, so it makes sense to take advantage of the amazing things our handhelds can do for us. Numerous different services, including Contxts, TextID DropCard and DUB, allow you to share an electronic version of a business card to anyone with SMS messaging. And several iPhone apps, including beamME, ShareCard and SnapDat, also allow users to electronically distribute professional contact information.

Organizing the Information

While traditional business cards aren’t a thing of the past, the old school rolodexes may have passed their prime. However, several varieties of card scanners enable users to convert paper business cards so they can be organized and stored digitally. In addition, CloudContacts can scan and organize information on paper into electronic form. And profile aggregators, such as MyNameIsE, REtaggr and Chi.mp, can collect your information from various social networking profiles into a single electronic card.

Striking a Balance

Although the trend may be shifting to making and nurturing business connections virtually, a complete shift to exchanging professional information digitally may be premature. Instead, with increased competition in our rich business culture, establishing a clear business identity and conveying it in an effective, interesting way through all forms of communication, including the traditional business card and these electronic forms discussed above, is imperative.

About the Author

Bill Post, Small Business Research Analyst, provides research on issues of concern to small businesses for 123Print.com Custom Business Cards. Prior to his involvement with 123Print, Bill was a small business owner himself, providing marketing and branding services to other small businesses in the Washington, DC metro area. Before working with 123Print on Business Cards, Bill also spent several years after receiving his degree in the fast-paced corporate world. It was there that Bill not only honed the skills he uses to help small businesses get ahead, but where he realized that he’d rather help the little guy prosper than make huge corporations money.

The following is a guest post by Carol Abedania. If you would like to write for this blog, please check out the guidelines here.

Online marketing is a good avenue for small businesses to do promotion.  It allows you to set aside a budget-friendly amount of money yet offers many options for you to market your products and services. By investing enough time and effort to make effective online marketing strategies, you’ll see how useful the internet is for your small business.

As a small business, creating your own TV or radio ad and using super-enlarged billboards on public places may not be realistic since these tend to be expensive. However, you can still reach a wider audience through the internet. This is the reason why online marketing is used by many businesses today. Online marketing can be done several ways. Here are tips on how you can do online promotions:

Smart Tips for Small Business Online Promotion

1. Optimize Your Site

An optimized page can rank well on search engines. To gain traffic and be found on search engines’ first pages for related search queries can require much optimization strategizing. One of the basic ways to optimize a site is by doing on-page optimization. Your pages’ link structures, keyword use, titles and content are important elements for on-page optimization. Study the basics about these SEO strategies and apply them to your entire site, and eventually you can go take on more sophisticated strategies like link building and site usability. This may all seem complicated at first, but even taking small steps in this direction could help a long way!

2. Use Social Media

One good thing about social media is that is it a very interactive medium where you can instantly reach and communicate with your target market. Many businesses use social media for promotion. It can keep your customers updated on any latest news from you. Customer engaging techniques like contests, product giveaways, and other promos can be done through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and other community sites. Promotion for your website to gain traffic can also be done using social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg and Mixx. Also, you can use social media to brand your business and increase the strength of its identity. There are also other available social media sites like YouTube where your video creation and promotion can possibly go viral.

3. Content Marketing

Content is king. Engaging content is the key to increase traffic to your website and gain more potential customers. Internet users today tend to look for sites that are useful and will give them the information they need. The quality of the information you produce can encourage visitors to stay longer in your site, trust your brand and recommend it to other people. An optimized page will be useless if people who visit them find the content unhelpful. It can even cause bounce rates to your site, or worse, give you a bad reputation. To make quality and appealing content, you need to inspire and make them want your product. The power of words is a strong marketing weapon that can influence a customer to move and make transactions.

4. Create Your Own Blog

Creating blogs can give you a lot of benefits. Aside from getting links from other people’s mentions of your posts and promoting your business website in general, it is also a medium for direct communication with your market. Blogs can be an avenue for you to brand your business, get connections, and participate in a community where you can gain more customers. By creating useful content, you can build a credible brand with authority. Using blogs also offers you the chance of building reputation through participating actively in the blogosphere, having product reviews and interacting in blogger community forums.

5. Mail Updates and Newsletters

Mailing lists are important so new blog posts and other updates from your website can be sent to your audience right away via email. There are many forms of mailing lists you can use for promotion and updates. For blogs, there are email subscriptions complementary to their usual RSS feeds where readers can also subscribe for post updates. Company websites typically use mailing lists to update their audiences about their latest promos. To convince them to participate, you can use audience-engaging techniques where your customers can be given exclusive benefits, giveaways and freebies like your branded calendars, postcards, or business cards. These are products that your subscribers can use frequently so they are often reminded about your brand at the same time.

Although the work might be very tedious, it’s all worth the time once you see the results of your efforts on marketing your product and business using the web. Internet marketing is important to communicate and deliver value to your customers while also finding ways on how your business can achieve your marketing goals though customer interaction. These strategies can be a good foundation and an important investment for your business promotions online.

About the Author:

Carol Abedania is currently an online content marketing specialist working at UPrinting.com. She writes about marketing tips, printing and design ideas, and other business topics related to online and offline promotion. Her interests include photography, advertising and design.

Creating an internet business website is just the first step to a long road of making money online. Once your website is up and you’re ready to do business (regardless of what business you’re engaging in), it is then time to market your online business.

The first part of marketing effectively on the internet is making sure your website looks professional. There’s no sense in spending time driving traffic to your site if it’s not appealing and people just leave right away. I recommend using WordPress as your website platform and then buying a professional WordPress Theme that you can customize.

Once your website is squared away, it’s time to get the word out. I’m a huge advocate of article marketing and is the primary marketing method that I use. The simple reason is that it works, and it works well on many levels. Articles bring in direct traffic, but they also add backlinks to your site and can be syndicated across the web by others providing even more backlinks and direct traffic.

Another effective marketing method is using videos. Now, I must admit that I don’t use this method near as much as I should, but I’ve noticed in the past that it has brought in traffic. If used correctly, video marketing can be used to generate leads for your business and bring in sales. Plus, videos can also provide backlinks to your content.

One thing you need to understand if you hope to rank well in search engines, specifically Google (which should be your ultimately goal), is that Google is looking for new and relevant content. What this means for your website is that it should be updated with new and relevant content on a regular basis. And, if you took my advice about using WordPress, you’re ready to use your website as a blog, which makes it exceptionally easy to keep updated with fresh content.

Another component that your online business should have is a newsletter. This allows you to keep your visitors and potential customers up to date with what’s going on. This also allows you to market products and services that are relevant to your site and newsletter.

As you probably noticed when I covered article and video marketing, I mentioned about getting backlinks. Once everything is in place and you’re ready to get traffic to your internet business website, backlinks are the glue that will hold everything together.

Search engine rankings… Traffic… Sales…

Backlinks are the key to everything. I can’t stress it enough. Article and video marketing are just two of the many ways to build backlinks to your site. AND… building backlinks through many varying marketing methods is the key to marketing your online business effectively.

My next posts (I don’t know how many yet) are going to cover backlinks in much detail. Everything is going to be broken down into segments, starting with what exactly backlinks are and the proper use of them… all the way to how to get them and much more.

This was spurred due to an influx of questions in my email inbox from people reading my blog and asking about backlinks, Page Rank, keywords, etc. I figured there is a good change that maybe some of you have similar questions or concerns, so I want to address everything publicly so that you’re all aware about this stuff so you can apply it to your own internet business website.

Be on the lookout for the first installment coming soon.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below…

This summer is going by so quickly… too quickly. July was a crazy month for me, mainly due to the fact that my fiance broke up with me. That was tough emotionally and physically. It took a while to get over the fact and finally move on. I knew that if I didn’t… my professional life would suffer dramatically, and I didn’t want that.

I’m back on track with some exciting new things going on. I’ll update you on them later on. For now…. let’s take a look at the blog posts from last month…

June Comment Contest Winners!

Adapting Your Style: Make Your Writing Work for You

Is Your Blog Grabbing Your Visitors’ Attention?

How to Increase Fan Numbers on Your Facebook Fan Page

Anatomy of Credit Card Processing

Take a second to leave a comment on any you may have missed. I hope to do more sponsored posts in the future as it adds a different flavor to the blog, as pointed out by Jason. The guest posts are also a nice addition, and I hope you’ve been enjoying them so far. Expect to see them around frequently.

Got any comments, questions or concerns, leave your thoughts below or send me an email.

Thanks for being a reader here, and I’ll see ya soon.

Register now! Free Call – June 23rd – 9 PM EST/6 PM PST

I know the economy has seen better days, but it’s very counter-productive if you just sit around and wait for things to get better. It’s important to take action to better your circumstances because they’re not going to get better on their own.

Here’s something that will truly change your life for the better (I hope), no matter what circumstance you may be in right now, but you have to take action.

A good friend of mine, Shannon Jaklic, is holding a teleseminar that will teach you how him and his wife, Kim, made $109,000 within 9 and a half weeks building a profitable business on the internet – Even in this tough economy.

This is the real deal, folks!

I was talking with Shannon on Facebook the other day, and he was telling me how him and his wife have a passion for sharing what they’ve learned over the past 3 years with other people. They didn’t come from wealthy families – They earned every cent they made.

Shannon had been working his butt off in the construction business, making $50,000 a year. Yeah… that’s some nice money, but he was also working 70 hours a week.

The money wasn’t worth the sacrifice of never seeing his family. I can’t blame him one bit for wanting out of that mess. There are just some things money can’t buy.

Long story short… Shannon and Kim realized they wanted to move in a different direction and get Shannon out of the construction business so that he could have more time with his family.

9 and a half weeks later, Shannon was able to quit his job.

Shannon and Kim have over 3 years of experience in network marketing and direct sales and have used what they learned to build multiple, successful online businesses, bringing in up to $50,000 per month.

No lie…

But this is where it gets really cool.

The teleseminar that Shannon and Kim are holding on June 23rd at 9pm EST is an informational call for entrepreneurial minded people looking to start or restart a business in today’s economy.

Within their 3 years of experience, they’ve learned some key components that are necessary to succeed in any online business, and also what you must avoid if you don’t want to fail. They’ll be sharing this information on the call.

You don’t want to miss it!

This is REAL advice… from REAL people who have a passion for helping others in these tough times.

This is about using a proven model and applying it to whatever business you want to create your own success and your own recession-proof future.

Shannon and Kim didn’t have any experience or skills when they started 3 years ago. So, if you think this stuff will be too complicated or over your head… relax, because this is exactly for people like you.

All you have to do is register for the live call and then prepare to be blown away June 23rd when things get kicked off at 9pm EST.

If you’re at all skeptical about this stuff… then just leave right now. This isn’t for the doubters and naysayers.

This also isn’t for the pouters. I’m not here to feel sorry for you, I’m here to help you, and I hope I can do that by getting you to sign up for the call. What you’ll learn will change your life.

This is for people who are willing to do whatever it takes to turn their financial situation around and create a positive and bright future.

Register for the FREE call now!

Making positive steps towards a better tomorrow will set yourself in the right direction from here on out.

Why wait for the economy to get better?

Create a better future starting today and sign up for the free teleseminar.

I’ll see you on the call.

May is here, and I particularly like this month. Maybe because my Birthday is right around the corner? Perhaps… .

In any case, April has come and gone. It seems like with the passing of April that Spring as come and gone as well. The beginning of May has been a scorcher, and temperatures are still hitting in the low 80′s. Yes, Summer is very early this year for my area.

I can’t complain, though, as the weather has been beautiful. I digress.

If you’ve been following along here then great. If not, then you really should subscribe to my RSS feed. I recommend subscribing via Email so you don’t miss a single post.

If you’ve happened to miss a post or two from last month, then that’s what this “Roundup” is for. Neat idea, huh?

Without further ado, here they are…

Get Paid to Write Blog Review Posts

Laugh A Little – Get Free Daily Web Cartoons

Should You Pay for Reviews?

Internet Marketing – How To Build and Rank an Authority Site the Google Way

The “Holy Grail” of Guest Blogging Tips

If you haven’t left a comment on them, then what are you waiting for? That’s the whole point here, and I share the love (link love, that is) with my little community.

So… join in, we’re all friends here.

Another month has gone by. Seriously… is it going as fast as I think it is? I seem to keep losing more and more time each day and getting further behind on stuff. I apologize for the minimal amount of posts. I’m doing my best to keep up and provide quality content to you all.

Alas, another time for a blog post roundup of last month’s posts. I have some awesome posts included in this, as well as some awesome ones to come. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them so far and have benefited from them.

I don’t take my blogging lightly. I put a lot of thought into what I’m writing and always have you, my readers, in mind. As always, your feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

Okay, without further delay let’s get started. Be sure to check out any posts you may have missed.

Affiliate Marketing is the New Job on the Market

30 Ways to Get Free Website Traffic In Minutes

Are You a Struggling Internet Marketer?

Proven Strategies to Increase Website Traffic and Generate Sales

Legitimate Worldwide Work From Home Opportunities

Are You Targeting ‘Paying’ Keywords?

How I Get Backlinks to My Blog Posts Resulting in Sales

Google Celebrates Valentine’s Day – They Gave Me $100!

The Official Alibaba.com Success Guide

I was very pleased to see the first post on this list had gotten Re-Tweeted 27 times so far. Thank you to all who spread the word to your Twitter followers.

The Twitter Tweetmeme plugin has proven to work well and makes it easy for Twitter users to Re-Tweet posts. If you’re not yet utilizing it on your own blog, you should be.

Again, thank you to all my readers!

Going off from what I wrote yesterday about why you will never make money online, I thought I’d provide some advice on what you can do to ensure that you DO make money online. This may have something to do with a reader unsubscribing from my RSS feed. I don’t know. Perhaps I struck a chord or was too harsh. Either way, the truth is the truth, and there’s no point in sugar-coating it.

So anyway, I want to give you some tips that will help you make money online, especially if you fall into any of the 3 areas that I posted about yesterday.

1. Learn the Skills – No this isn’t high school or college all over again, although it can feel like it at times (I didn’t go to college, BTW). There are skills that you will have to learn and obtain. This can be done through reading blogs or visiting forums. Find a few people that you trust and who are providing valuable information that you can apply to your online business. Yes, this will take time and actual work. Consider it homework, if you will. If you have to, get a mentor to ensure you’re going in the right direction.

2. Make Time! – This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Too many people complain about not having enough time to do things. Well that can be true to a degree, but there’s always ways in which you can better manage your time in order to make time for the things you say you don’t have time for. You’ll need all the time you can get building and marketing your online business, so you better learn to manage your time wisely.

3. Set Goals – I used to have a problem of not setting goals for my business. Now that I set goals, it encourages me to do what I have to do in order to reach those goals. Learn to set goals for yourself. They don’t have to be big ones, but set little baby goals that will act as stepping stones towards your big, ultimate goal.

4. Re-invest Your Money – Thanks to the internet you no longer need a lot of money to start your own business. In fact, depending on what you decide to do, you can get started for free. However, at some point, you’re going to want to re-invest the money you’re making back into your business. Use it to start a website, do some marketing, buy advertising, etc. Hire freelancers to do most of the leg work if you want. In simple terms, use your money to grow your business, otherwise it may stay stagnant.

5. Choose your programs carefully – I believe this is where most people fail. With so many programs and opportunities out there, choosing which one to go with can be very difficult. It’s important that you do your research before rushing into a decision. Once you do pick the program, believe in it with all your heart. If you don’t have faith in the program you’re promoting, no one else will either.

Got anything to add? Leave your thoughts in the comments below…