Small Business Information

Who wouldn’t like to increase their sales by 500%? Well there have been some reports of some very creative use of video that have achieved increases just like that but … and there’s always a but …

It’s not simply a case of shooting some video and uploading it to your site … there’s more to it than that and here is an interesting place to start if you’re thinking of including some video on your website. Be sure top watch the video but don’t try it at home … your wife might kill you.

So you’re thinking of selling your products to Baby Boomers and you’re going to give it a try using social networking?

Well … you could be missing most of your target audience. A study conducted in the United States last month found that only 22% of the baby boomers who were surveyed used social networking sites.

A further 26% of respondents said that they didn’t use social networking sites but they might at some time in the future. A whopping 53% of those surveyed said that they don’t use social networking sites at all.

Many respondents said that they just don’t see the point of social networking sites. Of course these figures are likely to change in the future.

Some of us have come into this industry and built our online businesses from the ground up. Others prefer to take the shortest possible route to what they see as success and so they buy an existing website that’s already making money.

But are those websites really making as much money as you think? Here’s an interesting story about a website that looked as though it was making a heap of money but a large cashflow was quite deceiving.

Our web design team have just completed an interesting project for a client who wanted to gently encourage people to come into his business rather than get in their face and almost demand that people do business with him.

It was also a project that’s aimed at a relatively small town full of retirees … it will be interesting to see how things go as we slowly introduce the site to the community. The pharmacy in Hervey Bay website was … and will be … something of a challenge.

If you haven’t heard of Twitter before … and you’re involved in marketing … then you’re missing something very important. Twitter isn’t just a place to stay in touch with people … it’s a place to market your products and a place to learn too.

There are some very cluey marketers over there doing business every day and it has a reach like you wouldn’t believe … and it’s getting bigger every day. Even Nasa spacecraft have a presence on Twitter.

But getting out there into the Twitter world isn’t just a case of joining up and then having contact with everyone. You actually have to choose which individuals you will follow and some of those will then elect to follow you … that’s when you can have a real dialogue with those people and begin to learn as well.

So how do you get started? The first thing is to head over to Twitter and sign up. Then come back here so that you can follow this link to my Twitter page. Once you’re on my Twitter page you will be able to see who I’m following and you’ll be able to join those that interest you.

But take a tip … before you begin to start trying to market on Twitter spend a lot of time getting to know how it really works and learning from the guys who are already doing well over there - otherwise you’ll end up wasting your time.