Choosing the Right Web Name

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Picking the right domain name for a website or blog is an essential step to success. Your domain name is the identifier of your blog or site. Be careful on choosing it. You want customers to find you among millions of other businesses, and you want your web site to be on Google's first page.
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Keywords / Phrases
Have 5 terms or phrases in mind that best describe the domain you are seeking. Once you made this list, you can start to add prefixes & suffixes to create domain ideas. For example, if you are launching your author domain, you might start with words like "author, writer, the genre etc." then play around until you can find a good match.
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More Tips:

• Make it Easy to Remember
• Keep the Name as Short as Possible
• Avoid Hyphens and Numbers
• Avoid fancy names that do not reflect you or your books

In the modern Internet world, where people automatically turn to the Web for information, it pays to have a domain name that reflects your business.

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How Smart Businesses Write to Market their Products

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Social Media has become part of our culture, and it helps to connect with your customers. However when scrawling through tweets and other posts on Social Media sites, one gets the impression that 90% of all posts by writers are “buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff ….”  Few links are pointing to interesting, and really entertaining or helpful content – despite the fact that there are so many talented writers out there who could write great articles. Just go to Elance and check out their inexpensive offers. Writing content and posting it, makes your Social Media presence more valuable and would connect with customers.

Question: Whom Would you Believe More:

a) advertisements
b) newspaper / magazine articles
c) samples to try out a product

Most consumers are not excited by pure advertising, they prefer authentic content and like to read valuable articles / postings.

Why are businesses trying to market their products only with a) when b) and c) are more authentic in the eyes of consumers – or at least a mixture of a, b and c?  I am not telling you a secret here: b and c are free … and sometimes companies can even make money with writing newspaper and magazine articles.
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It is Called CONTENT MARKETING
And it is nothing new, if you work in marketing. From Coca Cola to Volkswagen to IKEA, content marketing is getting more and more foothold. Read an article “Why Content Marketing Works“
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Study after study have shown that this marketing method can be hugely effective for turning your audience into paying customers. When it’s done well, a content marketing strategy entertains your customers and shows them how good you are at writing.

Coca-Cola Journey, asks a series of questions about each story.  Here are three of them:

• Does it pass the water cooler test?
• Does it surprise you?
• Does it have universal appeal?

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Write Something of Value for Your Customers
– which is “by chance” part of your product, such as travel tips to the locations were your product can be used, museums, festivals or public transportation. You have to do your research anyway, why not use the material you gather and write several articles that you can offer – always mentioning your product in a byline. One more way of content writing: Try to write as many guest blogs as possible for top bloggers that are high on Google and Alexa rankings. It will give your company more exposure and new customers.
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Why Asking for (media) Reviews?
When you could get both: promotion and at the same time (often) being paid? I know, it is a new concept to many businesses, but when you think about it – it makes really sense: why use your time and effort to chase reviewers, when you can use your energy to leverage your writing content and your research content – to create articles that you can pitch to both, print and online newspapers and magazines?”

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Do’s and Don’ts in Content Writing / Blogging

• Headline attention – encourage readers to read the next line
• Use keywords that resonate with your audience
• Simple and direct works well
• Exciting, interesting, controversial, sensational all work well
• Numbers / lists / real data works well
• Just don’t be boring
• Don’t forget to install an opt-in email list to be able to contact your fans!

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Josh Pigford, a Social Media Marketing Guru Wrote Recently:
“The bottom line is that people trust editorial content more than they trust advertisements (only). Do the right mix. Whether your business is as big as Colgate or whether you are a one-person start up, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to utilize this simple fact in order to engage your audience and build your customer base.” And Joe Chernov brought it to the point: “Creating content that is so valuable that people would pay for it, yet you give it away for free, is a reliable way to earn the public’s trust.”

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Building a Small Business Brand Online

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A brand means the business’s “identity” and branding is just as important for small businesses as it is for big names.  Your brand is the sum total of the experiences your customers and potential customers have with your company.  A strong brand communicates what your company does, how it does it, and at the same time, establishes trust and credibility.
A fantastic tool to build your brand is Google+ and at the same time work on your SEO. See 22 reasons to use Google+ by Luis Galarza, one of them - if not the most important - is to improve your search engine ranking.
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The Big Seven: Steps to Business Success

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These seven basic steps show a complete map to business success.  For book publishers and any other business ... 

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Where do you find your customers online? Read more in this blog:
http://www.lizlockard.com/start-a-business/

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Helpful Books on Your Path to Success:


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