Marketing, Social Media & Technology
Suze Bragg and Sima Dahl join forces to deliver timely insights on the best marketing, social media and technology solutions for your business. Whether you're a newly minted entrepreneur or an industry veteran, you'll find tips and practical advice you can leverage in your business today. Recent Posts
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Posted by Sima Dahl on March 8, 2010
Here's a simple tip for building natural search-optimized pages. When you're writing web content or a new blog post, try to incorporate your primary and/or secondary keywords in the link text itself. Here's a basic example:  Bad Link Text = "Click here for more information on SEO." Good Link Text = "Click here for more information on SEO."By using intuitive text as your link, you're cluing in Google and other search engines as to what the page is about. ...Read More Industries: Sales and Marketing 
Posted by Suze Bragg on March 5, 2010
While researching Lijit, a free search tool for bloggers, I ran across this podcast by Lijit's marketing manager Tara Anderson. In today's online world, every business knows they need to engage with their customers, but getting started is overwhelming. Tara discusses why small businesses need to blog, as well as how to get started, and takes the guesswork out of the process that most people face. It's a quick how-to podcast that I recommend listening to: ...Read More
Posted by Sima Dahl on March 4, 2010
For many businesses, trade shows still represent a viable, cost-effective means to generate leads and awareness for their product or service but for others, they're expensive boondoggles with little if any return. Before you sign up for another show, ask yourself three important questions:
Your challenge is to weigh the cost and considerable effort against the return. If you decide a trade show is the right use of your resources, remember that it's not enough to just show up. You ne...Read More Industries: Sales and Marketing
Posted by Suze Bragg on February 27, 2010
According to an article in AdWeek, four of the top five corporations -- Walmart, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and General Electric -- "consistently post on their Twitter accounts," according to the study, titled "The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America's Largest Companies." (ExxonMobil was the exception.)Also, this study states that thirty-five percent of Fortune 500 corporations had an active Twitter account as of last year (i.e., one with a post within the past 30 days) and among the top 100 companies on the roster, 47 percent had a Twitter account. Best Buy launched TwelpForce on Twitter to aid customer support and currently have 24,191 followers. They cover everything from warranty...Read More
Posted by Sima Dahl on February 26, 2010
Facebook is the largest online social network with more than 400 millions uers. Many of us use Facebook to catch up with old friends, play games or more easily communicate with peer groups. But Facebook also provides us business owners an easy, passive way to gently remind our onine network about the business we're in, and that's powerful. One of my most recent client acquisitions came by way of Facebook referral from an old friend I went to High School with and haven't really seen since! According to Facebook, the average user:
Industries: Sales and Marketing
Posted by Suze Bragg on February 24, 2010
ROI is pretty basic: ROI = (X – Y) / Y, where X is your final value and Y is your starting value. Usually ROI is measured through dollars and cents; however, the principles can really apply to any type of investment monetary or not.
Posted by Sima Dahl on February 23, 2010
Think search is just for consumers? Think again! Last week I attended a seminar hosted by the Business Marketing Association that featured a panel of gurus from search giant Google, mega-distributor Grainger and b2b marketing agency Slack Barshinger. The key take-away? B2b businesses need to add Search Marketing to their marketing arsenal, and fast.  B2b search has increased 139 percent since 2007. Offline advertising from search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo is driving business executives online to find vendors, suppliers, partners and more. Statistically 52 percent of small business owners use search first when researching suppliers. And lest you think you can't reach the decision-maker, 64 percent of C-level executive...Read More
Industries: Sales and Marketing
Posted by Suze Bragg on February 21, 2010
I love stats and watching trends. With limited time I need tools that can tell me what I want to know quickly and efficiently. I like knowing what people are talking about online; what topics are going to appear on the cover of magazines soon; and what's bubbling up from around the globe. Three tools I use are: Wowd: This search tool tracks what people are searching in real-time and shows it on the screen. It's powered by real people using cloud architecture and you have to download it to use it. [Tip: It crashes a lot on Firefox, but seems to work fine on Internet Explorer.]
Posted by Sima Dahl on February 19, 2010
A few months ago, LinkedIn announced a partnership with Twitter whereby users can post updates they make in one social network directly in the other with a few simple clicks. For example, you might update your LinkedIn status to announce a new service offering or product launch and by ticking the tiny Twitter icon before you click share, your news will also be broadcast to your Twitter followers.  It works in both directions too. So if you find an interesting article and share it with your Twitter following, you can add #IN to your tweet and your LinkedIn status will also be updated. There are similar connections for Twitter and Facebook, and websites that will post your update to any number of social sites. Sounds...Read More
Industries: Sales and Marketing
Posted by Suze Bragg on February 17, 2010
Posted by Suze Bragg on February 15, 2010
Almost 3 years ago I wrote a blog about Ollie's Bakery, a small business in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This particular blog discussed my frustration with their customer service and it went on to be the most discussed blog topic, continuing years after I first wrote it. Now a new wrinkle has been added to the mix and I'm propelled to write about it. Plus it's an excellent opportunity for a case study. I wrote this blog on Monday, February 15th. On Wednesday, the 17th, local station WXII 12 news wrote about Ollie's plead for help. It's fascinating to read all the comments - 9 pages so far. But two things you need to know: (1) I moved to Denver, Colorado and (2) I love b...Read More
Posted by Suze Bragg on February 11, 2010
We all saw this coming. All the hype, all the interest, all the hours spent trying to keep up. It's supposed to unite us; keep us current on news and technology; find long lost friends wandering around the globe. Everybody, almost overnight, that was using a social media tool (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc) became a much sought-after "guru" to help spread marketing messages to their followers. Women who were changing diapers one month were being paid to hawk them on their family's blog the next. Today, conferences are filled with seminars on how to monetize all these brands' demand and bloggers are signing up in droves. It's exciting. It's empowering. It's overwhelming.Having worked for large companies for the last 10 years, I've engaged in a slower, more leisurely pace during the day. I've sat in planning ...Read More
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