Surely with all of the advances in technology, email no longer plays an important role in small business marketing, right? Wrong. Very wrong.   A recent report from email marketing service, iContact, finds that “83% of small and medium-size businesses say email is important or critically important to their overall marketing strategy.”   That [...]

“It practically pays for itself!” When someone is trying to sell you something, this is often a phrase you will hear. By using their widget, you will end up saving so much money that it actually offsets the original cost of the widget. It’s a phrase that can make you instantly skeptical, and sometimes with [...]

As Mother’s Day approaches, let us turn our thoughts to those dear ladies who add so much to so many lives. They’re our mothers, stepmothers, foster-mothers, “honorary” mothers, mothers-to-be…the list can go on. Whether working outside the home, driving the carpools, arranging schedules, shopping, cleaning, or all of the above and then some, mothers are [...]

  When Susan’s brother decided to create a website for his painting business, she seemed the perfect fit to do the copy writing. Graduating (with honors) with a degree in English, she was ready to make her brother’s website something special. She couldn’t wait to create!   The results? Imagine if William Shakespeare owned a [...]

  Effective branding is vitally important to all businesses, regardless of size. That said, larger businesses tend to have a distinct advantage when it comes to affording high-priced consultants who specialize in the conceptualization and execution of branding campaigns. This by no means says that a small business with a small budget cannot promote its [...]

They’re fun! They offer great opportunities to connect with old friends. They’re full of witty (and not so witty) memes, one-liners, and cartoons. They’re brimming with news items, photos of people’s children, political opinions, inspirational quotes, and more cute kitty pictures than you ever dreamed existed. Whether it’s a hashtag or a tagged picture, social [...]

  It’s funny…the things you remember about people.   I only met him once, although I didn’t actually meet him. It was at an engagement party, and this well-dressed 20-something, a friend of a guest, had put himself at the center of the conversation. I stayed along the perimeter of his circle of polite listeners [...]

“Short-cuts aren’t.” One of the toughest teachers I ever had in all of my years of schooling drummed that little chestnut into my head. One year under her strict tutelage taught me to hesitate and resist when presented with something that promised to be “the easy way” of completing a task. As much as I [...]

That salad would have been so perfect with dinner. Dinner was at home in the crockpot, no doubt making my kitchen smell divine. All I wanted were a few ingredients to make a nice salad to go with it. A quick stop in the supermarket and I’d be home right away. How complicated could it [...]

The distraught woman sat next to me at the salon looking almost ill, while her son, no more than three years old, sat perched on a booster seat in the salon chair, staring at his reflection with a look of complete puzzlement on his cherubic little face. His hair looked as if it had been [...]

It was just a plain cork board that hung on my wall when I was a teenager, but I loved it. You see, every square inch of it was covered! There were my teen heartthrobs, my favorite sports teams, pictures of my friends, wish list clothing…you name it, I pinned it! And now there’s Pinterest…another [...]

The seating hostess at a not-too-busy restaurant sat behind a podium engrossed in a novel. As my luncheon companions and I approached, she gave us the “talk to the hand” sign, indicating that we were to wait until she finished her paragraph. Not kidding…and it gets better. When she finally did bother to acknowledge my [...]

Tom’s website for his salon looked fabulous…but no one knew it. It had details about products, services, and special holiday packages. It had everything except for two things – visitors… and a “heartbeat.” And then Tom started a weekly blog for his salon’s website. Suddenly, the “patient” had a heartbeat – and more visitors than [...]

“…The party’s o-o-o-ver-r-r…” The holidays tend to be a high time for many businesses. Perhaps your company was one of those that saw a huge spike in sales during the month of December. Nothing lasts forever, though, and unfortunately, that includes the holiday spending rush. January rolls around, as do your customers’ holiday bills, and [...]

Ever take a look at the Facebook pages of some of today’s teenagers? It’s…interesting. You could run a successful coat factory with all of the fur that flies between those pages! “She said THIS…He did THAT…I just cannot STAND them!!!” Thank goodness adults are beyond such behavior. You can stop laughing now. You don’t have [...]

It’s usually the first thing that your potential customers see, and it says so much about your business. But is it saying the things you want it to say, or is it leaving people put off or confused? Is it making you stand out in the crowd…or is your logo…a no go? Keep in mind [...]

I spend a lot of my time online…no real surprise, I guess. I get my news here. Sometimes I socialize here. I most definitely shop here! In fact, I was just commenting to someone that I must have done 90% of my Christmas shopping online this year! Let’s face it, there are far fewer crowds [...]

There are certain individuals in this world who are so dynamic, so inspirational, that is sometimes easy to forget that we can’t have them with us forever and eventually they will be taken away from us. For me, Zig Ziglar – salesman, author, renowned speaker, and inspiration to entrepreneurs worldwide – was such an individual. [...]

It sounds innocuous, almost cute and fun…but it strikes fear in the hearts of business owners who have invested capital in their websites with the hope of improving sales.   It’s the Bounce Rate. It’s mysterious. It’s menacing. It’s misunderstood.                               [...]

Once upon a time in the land of Search Engine Optimization, a business could assemble a sub-par website full of carelessly written content, throw in a hefty helping of meta keywords and tags, craft a few links and…PRESTO… they would enjoy instant search engine ranking!   Those days are gone.   As Search Engine Optimization [...]

I found my solution in a bottle! Let me rephrase that.  I discovered a cleaning solution that worked wonders for me on countless occasions.  This was great stuff, and I am a customer to this day. Funny thing though…I never would have given it a second look if I had seen it on a shelf with other [...]