Contests are a popular strategy today to reach small business owners.A good contest can:engage the hearts and minds of business ownerscreate goodwill toward your companysometimes get a viral effect goingbuild brand recognitionbe a source of PR and media attentionBut if you are running a contest with an online component (as most contests these days seem [...]

Half of women surveyed said that blogs influence their decisions to purchase. That comes from a recent survey of roughly 6,000 women by BlogHer (the network of women bloggers) and Compass Partners.The study has a number of findings, but the one about purchase decisions stood out to me. Here’s the chart that [...]

Only a relatively tiny percentage of entrepreneurs and small businesspeople use anything other than Google or perhaps Yahoo to perform searches for vendors and suppliers and important business research.B2B search engines are not used nearly as much. However, they are worth looking into, to make sure you cover all the bases, as a recent [...]

I often get asked, “How does one find small business blogs, so my company can reach out to the small business community?”There are a number of techniques for identifying small business blogs that attract the audience you want to reach.The technique I am going to cover today is called “Follow the Leader.” If you can [...]

Jennifer Laycock, Editor of Search Engine Guide, explains how they are marketing an upcoming conference using a homemade video on YouTube.  The video cost them just $148.  It took 18 hours of time (divided among 3 people) to create.  She writes:It’s a short video, just a minute and a half, but it sums up the point of our show [...]