Archive for category Small Business and The Internet
Something Wrong At Mashable? Incompetent or Intentional Misleading Articles – Social Media
It seems every time I go to mashable to read something that purports to be research about social media, I found that the article contains reference to some numbers (it’s almost always survey numbers which are virtually useless in assessing value), and then includes one or two sentences implying positive contributions of social media that [...]
100 Ways to Measure Social Media Is Really ZERO Ways to Measure Social Media – No BS Guide To Twitter/Social Media For Small Business
David Berkowitz is billed as “Senior Director of Emerging Media & Innovation for agency 360i. A frequent speaker and media pundit, he has been published hundreds of times in MediaPost, Ad Age, eMarketer, and elsewhere.” He authored some material entitled 100 Ways to Measure Social Media, and indeed he describes some “metrics” that [...]
Twitter Visitors (LoValue) vs. Average Visitors – No BS Guide To Twitter/Social Media For Small Business
Posted by Robert Bacal in No Bs Guide To Twitter/Social Media For Small Business, Small Business and The Internet, Small Business and Twitter on February 21, 2010
A fellow webmaster did a quick albeit unscientific analysis of what different visitors did once they went to his site. He compared visitors coming as a result of Tweets versus all other ways. This is what he got:
34% shorter visits
22% higher rate to go away
48% less page views per visit
Twitter by Numbers – Still “Little Commercial Value” For Small Business
Posted by Robert Bacal in General, Small Business and The Internet, Small Business and Twitter on February 18, 2010
I keep hoping I’ll find numbers that validate that spending time on Twitter actually delivers ANY reasonable return on investment. Periodically I look at numbers and surveys, and what I see is that companies BELIEVE it’s good to invest in Twitter and other social media platforms, but positive hard verifiable data is STILL lacking. [...]
Jumping Off Bridges A Boon To Businesses (How Social Media Experts BS You)
Posted by Robert Bacal in Small Business Strategy and Decision-Making, Small Business and The Internet, Small Business and Twitter, Technology on December 9, 2009
Fred Radish didn’t realize it then, but out of his despair came a business success. In November, 2008, Radish, CEO of Participles RU, was headed to bankruptcy. His business was failing, his wife left, and his children were all teenagers. Bleakly Radish stood on the Brooklyn Bridge staring into the abyss. He jumped!
Radish woke up [...]
More Bogus Claims for Social Media and Business “ROI”/Success
Posted by Robert Bacal in Small Business Strategy and Decision-Making, Small Business and The Internet, Small Business and Twitter on December 8, 2009
I’ve pretty much given up on trying to refute the garbage being passed off as proof that Social Media is valuable to business, or small business. I’m at the point that if you want to spend you time on Social Media, and you can’t find better ways to market and improve your business, you probably [...]
Stop Wasting Money! Reduce Spend without Reducing Overall Performance of Your PPC Campaigns
Posted by Robert Bacal in Free Stuff For Small Business, Marketing, Small Business Strategy and Decision-Making, Small Business and The Internet, The Building of a Small Business Website on September 18, 2009
Short Description: Discover 7 key strategies to help reduce your PPC campaign spend without impacting performance.
Long Description: Are you spending money somewhere in your PPC campaign that isn’t yielding good profits for you? These days it’s imperative for marketers to be as efficient as possible with their marketing budgets. This white paper identifies 7 areas [...]
Questions to Ask Your Prospective Paid Search Advertising Agency
Posted by Robert Bacal in Free Stuff For Small Business, Hiring and Personnel (HR), Marketing, Small Business and The Internet on September 18, 2009
If you are managing a paid per click ad account yourself, such as Google Adwords, or the similar systems from Yahoo and Microsoft, you’ll know that it’s not an easy thing to do. It really does require some specialized skills and knowledge to do it correctly, but the good news is that PPC ads can [...]
If you hang around long enough in your small business, good things happen. All That Free PR
Posted by Robert Bacal in General, Marketing, Micro Businesses, Small Business Challenges, Small Business Strategy and Decision-Making, Small Business and The Internet on September 16, 2009
Amidst a week from hell, with a raft of technical problems that are affecting access to our network of websites, I was taking a break, and used google to search for my name. Now, let me be clear. I don’t hunt around for a quick ego gratification jolt (you buying that?). Actually, I periodically search [...]
Small Business Use of Twitter Requires Almost Continuous Investment
Posted by Robert Bacal in Small Business Strategy and Decision-Making, Small Business and The Internet, Small Business and Twitter, The Building of a Small Business Website on September 2, 2009
Amidst the hype surrounding Twitter, there are many CURRENT realities that are lost. One reason this is the case is that if you look at the people suggesting Twitter and other social networking platforms, you’ll find that pretty much all of them are fanatical, loud, and, as a result, influential on blogs, and other social [...]
Study Supports Contention That Social Media Ineffective For Marketing Small Business
Posted by Robert Bacal in Marketing, Small Business Strategy and Decision-Making, Small Business and The Internet on August 28, 2009
For a number of months I’ve been trying to counter the enthusiasm and zeal of marketers who are insisting that if you aren’t marketing via social media (twitter, facebook, etc), that you are doomed. I’ve suggested that, in fact, what is happening in social media venues is that marketers end up trying to sell to [...]
Excellent free guides for e-business
Posted by Robert Bacal in Small Business and The Internet, The Building of a Small Business Website on August 27, 2009
I just wanted to pass on this source for guides about ebusiness, and using the Internet as part of your e-business strategy. The site appears to be partly funded by the Province of Saskatchewan and presents 30+ guides on all aspects of ebusiness from building a website to dealing with fraud in ecommerce.
There’s too much [...]
Unique Value Proposition and Your Website
Posted by Robert Bacal in Small Business and The Internet, The Building of a Small Business Website on August 25, 2009
Small businesses tend to build websites without really following a set of sensible “thought-exercises” that will ensure sucess, which is one reason why most small business websites fail miserably.
One neglected aspect is the Unique Value Proposition that your website will or does offer visitors. This should be established early on, before any website coding is [...]
Before Al Gore…
Posted by Robert Bacal in For New Visitors, Small Business and The Internet on August 25, 2009
Before Al Gore allegedly invented the Internet, Bacal & Associates existed as a somewhat technologically enabled regular offline business. And as the Internet and the Web became more and more prevalent, we used more and more of its features to grow our small business and generate new revenue streams.
So, we’ve been without the big “I”, [...]
Small Business Owners Web Hosting Guide
Posted by Robert Bacal in Small Business and The Internet, The Building of a Small Business Website on August 18, 2009
Small Business Owners Web Hosting Guide – Part 1By Cynthia Wang
Your small business website needs to be hosted on a web server or simply a server (another name for computer) that is connected to the World Wide Web so that anyone can access your website.
Choosing a web hosting company for your small business website is [...]