Create Content Get Your Customers from Your Community

As a small business, in addition to create your service/products under low-budget, you will also need to hire or become a Marketer/Salesperson. So one of the best ways to reach and build strong and lifetime relationship with your customer is to create your Content Marketing. Let’s expose two points here: What’s in it for you and what publishing formats are available?

::What’s in it for you in the Online Professional Community Network: Belonging to any active community as small business owner allows you to get to your targeted audience, be closer to your prospects and have a direct contact with them through Content Marketing with in the Networking Platform. These articles are both sharable and subject to be reviewed by your followers. You can also receive an endorsement from your peers (peer to peer communication) which is a sign of validation of You understand buyers. Once the prospects know what kind of expert you are and what’s in it for them, turn them into profitable customer become easier. An example of such community is TaxMamba is The Tax, Accounting & Finance community Network platform of experts and financial resources. ::Which published formats are available: The format can play an important role in terms of how viral your content can become. The Content Marketing can be a simple text (and pdf,..), audio, image, photo and video. These two last choices attract easily a large number of audience in a very short period of times, so they become usually a great source of VIRAL MARKETING. Meanwhile, the text format is easier for site optimization, which is easily searchable by search engines (like Google , Bing and Ask, etc…..)

Finally, it clears that this great recession has transformed the buyer’s attitude. They are no more easily influenced by those marketing messages, instead they do their own research to shape their minds and take their own decisions without pressure from the salespeople. That is why any small business, which could provide this precious currency called Content Marketing, will attract prospects and turn them into customers. Data is the New Oil.

Fans vs Links or Search Engines vs Social Networks.

In this down economic, small businesses must adapt or die. To survive, they seek new opportunities such as to find new customers or to offer new and superior products/services to their existing customers.
So How do they communicate those opportunities to their new or existing customers. Is it through Search Engines or Social Networks? which one is better for your small mid-sized business?
Let us explore these two digital marketing tactics:

1) Search Engines:
A Search Engine is designed to search for any kind of information on the internet. The information comes in many formats : web pages, images, video, sound and other types of files.
The dominant players are Google and Baidu.
In the United States, Google held a 63.2% market share in May 2009, according to Nielsen NetRatings.
In the People’s Republic of China, Baidu held a 61.6% market share for web search in July 2009.
In order for your website to be seen by prospects or random buyers or researchers, you should optimize it by using SEO (search engine optimization). It is one of the tactic used by the Marketer, so that your website could be found by any Search Engines such as Google.com or Bing.com when the prospect or the customer is researching randomly your products/services.
The main currency of SEO is Link Building, which allows Google.com (they create the expression link lover in order to highlight the importance of link building) or Bing.com to find your website easily.
As a result of good link building, your website should get a
well deserved quality traffic .

Briefly let’s describe how Search Engine:
It stores information about many web pages retrieving from the html pages by following this process:

• Web crawling: an automated Web browser which follows every link on the site.
• Indexing: Data about web pages are stored in an index database for use in later queries to be found
  quickly.
• Searching and Retrieval : When a user enters a query into a search engine (typically by using key words),
  the search engine examines its index and provides a listing of best-matching web pages according to its criteria, usually with a short summary
  containing the document’s title and sometimes parts of the text.

2) Social or Business or Professional Networks:
A Social Network is a social structure made up of individuals or organizations
called “nodes,” which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency such as friendship, kinship, common interest and financial exchange.
With such networks, you could engage with people at the social level ( e.g. Facebook.com or twitter.com) or at the business level (linkedin.com).
Let’s examine briefly how it works:
Create an Individual or Business profile that is used to connect to others by becoming their fans or friends (in case of Social Networks) or by being their followers (in case of Business Networks).
It means that you can connect to people and organizations quickly on 24h/7 days.

3) What is the best tactic for your organization: Fans or/and Links?
Social Networks allow small business to connect directly to organizations, people and distribute your content constantly at nearly zero cost;
it can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact or customer base without big budget.
These networks can also act as a customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services where they can listen to their customers (particularly their complaints or their praise), engage with them (e.g Twitter.com).
Companies can also use Social Networks for advertising (social advertising in FaceBook.com) in the form of banners and text ads.
If your Businesses operate globally, Social Networks can make it easier to keep in touch with your contacts around the world.

Clearly, whether it is Social/business/professional Networks (
TaxMamba , Facebook, Twitter, Xing.com,
Spoke.com, Marriage.com….) or Search Engines (google.com, bing.com, ask.com …),
both of them are here to stay and they will be used by small businesses not only to get deep customer insight but also to design strong business branding by converting their customers into brand advocates or influencers.

3 favorite types of Vertical Websites

Most small business store owners see their firm as local. The same thing applies to a small online business.
A local internet company usually belongs to a vertical market, which is a set of businesses that offer specialized needs for a niche market.
Thus, Let’s talk about 3 types of vertical websites that are often used by customers:
Online coupon sites, Shopping comparison sites, User review and Professional network sites.

• Online coupon sites
  You must have noticed a proliferation of coupon based websites recently such Groupon.com, mycoupon.com etc….
  They are just right behind major search engines. 35% of US online users are using coupons to buy online.
  It favors users that are looking for low price, deals etc…

• Shopping Comparison sites :
  According to compete.com 80M of US online users use shopping comparison sites (dealtime.com, zappos.com, like.com, milo.com, shopzilla.com, Nextag.com, ComparisonBuys.com etc..) .
  This group is really used by e-commerce businesses to sell electronic devices, groceries, shoes etc…
  It contains user-generating reviews and rating; it is used by people who are sensitive to price, location and brand.
• User review and Professional network sites :
  Online users trust users-generated review sites. It usually includes RATING and other features such company profile, discussion and job postings, tips, questions answered by experts. it’s a trusty, measurable way that business owners use to promote their product or service in the community. Some of these names are zocdoc.com, avvo.com, webmd.com and Taxmamba.com (in beta phase and
  powered by MLFSolutions)

Finally, the future of business is online where you (business owner or searcher or browser ) should precise and measurable results. Therefore, vertical businesses allow small business to reach this goal quickly
(and avoid big online and offline businesses) by targeting a niche market with AGILE and LEAN goals in this
challenging and rapidly change world.


Let me know what you think about any type of vertical business, just add your comments below.

Social referrals: How to attract this vital currency (page 4 of 4) – iMediaConnection.com

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Why create a landing page for Google, Bing, Ask and other Search Engines?

If I can guess, you have a website and wished you could drive more traffic to it? You have tried pretty much Facebook, Twitter, telling your friends and family, going to trade shows, conference … but at the end still NOTHING.The answer is SEO and PPC ( visit last month blog about Paid Search or Natural SEO ) but before that you need to create and optimize a Landing Page for all the search engines.In this article, I will introduce and elaborate on some characteristics of a Landing Page Optimization(OLP) without going into a lot of details. 1 – What is a landing page and what are the different types? A landing page is a the first page where an online user faces when he/she clicks on an external link responding to a query search or to a direct browsing to a site. A landing page fufills critical functions and could come in three categories: A main site that has a home page to your entire audience, access to other pages via navigation. A microsite focus to a subset of audience which requires a lot of supporting information, A stand-alone page to a very specific audience with single service or product. For e.g. Lead capture page or white paper distribution page. 2 – What type of audience are you targeting on your landing Page? The landing page is optimized by targeting specific audience. For e.g. you could taylor your landing page for lead capture by providing a white paper to the user, it can be for purchase or printout as well. An optimized landing page should not target every type of user at the same time. Thus, it serves a single mission critical function linked to an online user type. They are various types of audience for a landing page optimization(OLP): Prospects (convert visitors into customers). Customers (convert prospects into customers, get repetitive customers). Expert seekers. Investors. workers. Competitors. 3 – Conclusion: By optimizing your landing page you implement a mission critical function of your website such as Purchase or Donation for a specific group of online users in order to ‘Get QUALITY TRAFFIC’, which should translate into ‘REPEATBLE AND PROFITABLE’ CUSTOMERS OR MEMBERS. Let me know what you think about this subject. The MLFSolutions Team.

Paid search or Organic SEO?

Should I do Paid Search Or Organic search?.
It is the same question big CEOs face when they want to grow their customer base:
M&A (merging and acquisition) or Organic growth?.
To determine which search optimization methods the website owner could choose,
we will examine each method and how to use it for the appropriate situation.

1. Organic or Natural SEO (Search engine Optimization):
In general, Website owners use this technique so that their website could be found (on Page 1) and be
indexed by most search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Dogpile etc….).
Briefly (I will not go into much details here), it is about a set of tactics
such as incoming links, web page title, description and keywords to be implemented for each
page on your site. To do it the right way, you should contact a professional or an agency. This on-going process takes time to be successful.
The success comes when the name of your site appears in the middle of the search engine
page (on Page 1 on Google or Bing or Yahoo…) after a keyword search query (SERP: search engine results page, is a listing of web pages).
<< This tactic is also used to search your site internally (this functionality is available
with Google at Google Site Search).
I will talk more about “Your Website Search” in more detail in the future.>>
However, as you can guess this process takes time to succeed, so what is out there for those
who can’t wait (as a lot of entrepreneurs face time issue). Fortunately, the answer is PPC.

2. PPC (Pay per click):
Some clients are only interested in this method because they want quick results
and nothing else. It is a process of bidding on keyword phrases linked to your targeted
market. The advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. Some content sites
may charge only fixed price fee per click. It is an Off and On process.
They are many providers: Google Adwords, Yahoo!Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.
Even with a limited spend, clients choose also this method because it gives a predictable ROI (return on Investment).
You can track the conversion from leads or visitors to customers easily.
This tactic also suits clients who want to mount a quick and segmented online campaign to a particular audience.
They can use unlimited keywords (if they can afford them) with PPC compared to Organic SEO where there
are some limitations. The result coming from this method is a list of web pages seen at the right side or at the top of the page
after a keyword query search. The listing has usually a header called SPONSORED LINKS.
This process requires often a landing page which is an optimized Marketing web page that displays relevant
content to the advertisement (selected keyword) in order to get the targeted audience.
Basically , if you bid on individual tax preparation keyword and you display
“corporate tax information” on your web page, you definitively will miss your targeted audience, therefore you will waste a lot of money.
I will be talking about Landing Page optimization (LPO) in the future in much more details.

3. Natural (Organic) SEO & PPC:
The response is definitively yes. The mixing of PPC (or paid placement) and Organic or Natural SEO is designed under the
process called SEM (Search Engine Marketing). It is a process of promoting your website by being visible
on the search engines through PPC, Organic SEO, contextual advertising (scans your website for keywords, for e.g Google Adsense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, Microsoft adCenter, Ad-in-Motion)
and paid inclusion (charge fee to include your site in their search index) and paid placement.
With this tactic, the client’s website appears in any place (top,down and middle) in the listing result
after a keyword search query on the search engine. So both tactics can be used simultaneously to have
maximum online visibility; Lead Conversion and ROI Tracking become more efficient.
A Digital Marketing plan will be required to define your audience, objectives, marketing tools or tactics,
measurement tools(metrics) and ROI, which will allow you to get leads, and converts them to customers.
To execute it the right way, do not hesitate to contact a professional or
an agency

Finally, your choice depends on your objective:
a quick campaign with unlimited keywords (off and on) or on-going long process campaign with limited keywords.
in order to be competitive in this crowded online market for a long term, one way to do it is by differentiating yourself from
your competitors through an aggressive mixing of Organic SEO and PPC(SEM).
Please tell me what you think and do hesitate to give me your comments, thoughts, feedback.

We’re all haitians!

For Haitians (including the entire world), what is happening(one of the worst) in Port-au-Prince (Haiti) should be compared to 9/11 attack in New York City. The former is an earthquake (a natural disaster) and the latter is a terrorist attack.
That is why one should call it: HAITI 2010 YEAR ZERO

MLFSolutions has compiled a list of Organizations (Haiti resources) that are helping Haiti.

Link(s)	News
New York Tech Cares	Proceeds go to Oxfam for Haiti
—————————————————
worldvision	Your donation will go towards including food, clean water, blankets, and tents — to children and families devastated by the earthquake and aftershocks in Haiti.
—————————————————
The Global Syndicate	THURSDAY, JANUARY 28 , NEW YORK CITY M2 Ultralounge 530 W 28th Street, New York, NY 10019 6P-7P: Mix & Mingle 7P-10P: Program features special guests and Phone/Text Banking The beneficiaries are: Clinton Bush Haiti Fund , Project Medishare, Haitian Support Group, Yele Haiti
—————————————————
Yele Haiti	Donations for Haitian Refugees,Haitian Earthquake and other links.
—————————————————
Clinton Bush Haiti Fund	Support the Earthquake Recovery Efforts in Haiti.
—————————————————
Haiti Earthquake Rebuilding	Haiti Earthquake Rebuilding
—————————————————
Doctors Without Borders	Doctors Without Borders
—————————————————
Red Cross	Red Cross:
—————————————————
Mercy Corps	Mercy Corps:
—————————————————
Oxfam America	Oxfam America:
—————————————————
United Way Responds to Haiti Earthquake	United Way
—————————————————
Mobile/SMS donations ( now surpassed $20 million).	Donate via text message: Text the word “Quake” to 20222 to donate $10 On behalf of The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund Text the word “Oxfam” to 25383 to donate $10 On behalf of Oxfam America, Inc. On behalf of Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, Inc. (CARE) Text the word “Give” to 25383 to donate $10 On behalf of the MTV telethon Text the word “AJWS” to 25383 to donate $10 On behalf of the American Jewish World Service Text the word “Haiti” to 90999 to donate $10 On behalf of the American Red Cross in the U.S. Text the word “Yele” to 501501 to donate $10 on On behalf of the Yele Foundation, the leading contributor to rebuilding Haiti founded by Wyclef Jean Text the word “Haiti” to 52000 to donate $10 On behalf of the Salvation Army Text the word “Hope10” or “UNICEF” to 20222 to donate $10 On behalf of UNICEF Text the word “Habitat” to 25383 to donate $10 On behalf of Habitat for Humanity Text the word “Haiti” to 40579 to donate $10 On behalf of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) Text the word “Save” or “Safe” to 20222 to donate $10 On behalf of Save the Children Federation, Inc. Text the word “Give” or “World” to 20222 to donate $10 On behalf of World Vision Inc. Text the word “Haiti” to 85944 to donate $10 On behalf of the International Medical Corps Text the word “Haiti” to 25383 to donate $5 On behalf of the International Rescue Committee Text the word “Care” to 25383 to donate $10 On behalf of Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, Inc. (CARE) Text the word “Live” to 25383 to donate $10 On behalf of Americares, Inc. Text the word “Give” to 25383 to donate $10 On behalf of the MTV telethon Text the word “AJWS” to 25383 to donate $10 On behalf of the American Jewish World Service Text the word “Haiti” to 45678 (In Canada Only) On behalf of the Salvation Army in Canada Text the word “Haiti” to 90999 to donate $10 On behalf of the American Red Cross in the U.S. Text the word “Haiti” to 30333 (In Canada Only) to donate $5 On behalf of the Plan Canada Text the word “Hope” or “Monde” to 45678 (In Canada Only) to donate $5 On behalf of World Vision Canada Text the word “CAHAITI” to 20222 (In Canada only) to donate $5 On behalf of the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative

What are Your Wishes For 2010?

Let me guess one of them (for a business owner) is : DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE. As you may know by reading the November Newsletter: Treat Your WEBSITE LIKE A BUSINESS. A business usually does not survive without prospects or growing customer base. Likewise a Website does not survive without a Targeted Traffic (to find prospects and convert them into customers) either. That is why MLFSolutions would like to provide some Basic Strategies to drive the RIGHT TRAFFIC to your website: 1.Optimize your Website: Ask your Web Designer (or if you) to add some tags such as title, meta, h1, h2 etc…to your website in the proper place. This is mostly technical. Do not hesitate to visit MLFSolutions for more information. 2.Good Clean, Professional, Rich and Content driven Website: The Website owner must develop a concise, dynamic and professional content. It must contain some keywords used by your prospects or customers. So you must have some ideas or insights about who are your potential customers (demography, lifestyle, etc…). Any search engine website(or SEO company) could help you find the right keywords (Keyword Optimization, Keyword Analytics, Keyword Research). Do not hesitate to visit MLFSolutions for more information. 3.Link Building ( Google = Link Lover): This is one of Google key parameters (and very delicate) to drive traffic to your site. Google is sometimes called “Link lover” because it relies heavily in this tactic (with PageRank, which we will not discuss here). Create a blog (or even your dedicated site) and link it to other sites and ask people to comment on your topic. They can also place your website link on their sites, particularly those sites that are heavily visited. Participe in forums (linked to your niche business) and have a signature link that points to your site. Perhaps,you may need a help of a Digital Marketing MLFSolutions for this important and delicate task. 4.Promote your business with Social Media: By now, every website owner should have a Facebook or/and Twitter account (business account). Post comments on your page (and partner pages) and have a signature link that points to your site Advertise your website in a post on the directories such as Dmoz, Business.com, RegVip and on Craigslist (avoid spam). Have a link to your site on community sites such as Yahoo Groups, MSN Groups, RegVip, MySpace, Facebook , YouTube etc.. Create some pages with links to your site on places such as Regvip, Squidoo,Digg, Delicious, Hubpages … 5.Email Marketing: The list will be incomplete without Email Marketing. It helps Small-Midsized businesses cut their marketing expenses, Therefore maximize their marketing objectives. According to Simms Jenkins (from the book titled The Truth about Email Marketing) “Email Marketing is extremely cost efficient, targeted and measurable…”. You must build Permission based Email Contact List, track your Campaign Results, link to Google analytics as well. And Lastly, you can track and improve your ROI (return on investment) by connecting your list to a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) application. Do not hesitate to visit BestCampaignPro for more information. Finally, I would like to thank Our Customers, Friends, Fans and Partners for engaging with us. Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year 2010. Leon Fangnigbe CEO & Chief Software Architect at MLFSolutions | BestCampaignPro

What I Know For Sure!!!

What I Know For Sure Is that you can learn from your mistakes by analyzing them? Part of what we learn is just how powerful symbols coming out of a Small-Midsized Company could change the entire industry (Bill gates with PC or The Wright’s brother with Flying), therefore an entire nation or perhaps the entire world. There 10 main ideas that I would like to share with you:

1.Communication – In order to operate or manage your business and raise capital, you must COMMUNICATE. It is key to find prospects and convert them into customers and make them profitable. they could refer you to their friends,families and networks when they are happy with your work.

Effective communication is also important in order to meet Bankers, Angels and Venture Capitalists. Knowing the Language of Capital helps you raise funds with your family and your friends as well.

2.Website – Treat your WEBSITE LIKE A BUSINESS. If you are not sure, just ask Amazon or Google. If you want to stay in business for longtime, you must have both an Optimizable and Marketable Website(and domain name), which makes your firm stand out from your competitors online and offline and places you in front of your targeted prospects and customers. Do not hesitate to spend to get a Good Clean, Professional and Content driven Website. Visit MLFSolutions for more information.

3.Customer or Prospect database Listing – If you are in business and you do not have a Customer or/and Prospect database that contains at least their names and emails, you may be one step away from going back to work. Without such a database, you will have hard time to reach out to your prospects (for acquisition, conversion and retention of customers). In order to build a profitable database, you need to start writing newsletters, blogs, e-books,Wikis, Webinars and video blogs so that you could invite and educate them about your products. Just observe two such companies as Amazon and Vistaprint. They send you their newsletters every week so when you are ready to order, you can just contact them because you have been exposed to their products or services. Visit BestCampaignPro for more information.

4.Traffic – Frankly any website without traffic gets nothing- no visitor, no prospect and no customer. That is why an Optimized and Marketable Website is Required. To get a targeted traffic, the Website owner should contact an expert who could help him or her implement such digital marketing tactics such Search Engine Optimization(SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) . Visit MLFSolutions for more information.

5.Sales – Selling a Service or Product is NEVER EASY, particularly in these though times. As an owner of a small-midsized business, if you cannot sell your own products or services, it will be extremely difficult or nearly impossible for others to sell them successful. You need to develop a Vendor strategy after creating a Marketing Strategy such as licensing and promotion 6.Grow – A Small-Midsized Business Must Grow or Die. Therefore the founder and the management must be relentless, flexible and agile in changing the direction of his or her goals when it is required. INNOVATION is a one of the main drivers for the growth of a business. The bottom line any business is “GROW OR DIE”.

7.Cash – Cash is king particularly for small-midsized businesses. It is even more important for startups(less than 2 years) without track records to operate, such as to pay your employees or suppliers, etc… . The management team must know how much working capital it requires to operate monthly and yearly. Therefore, she or he must master and keep track of 4 financial terms: REVENUES, GROSS INVOME, OPERATING INCOME AND NET INCOME. Finally, make sure you understand the difference between LOAN and LINE OF CREDIT.

8.Competitors – Going into business is like going to war. There are more than 25 million businesses out there (only in the US). Nearly half of the startups die after 5 years according to Small Business Administration (SBA ). In order to win, Yes it is about WINNING (ask Jack Welsh, the former CEO of GE) and lasting in order to serve your clients. So you must develop a Practical and Actionable Marketing Strategy, most importantly in this rapidly changing world a Digital Marketing Strategy to lay out weekly or daily activities. This is how you stay ahead of your competitors.

9.Checklist – With the grueling or even dreaded day to day management of a firm, it would be wise to have a task checklist for your daily task. It matters most for small-midsized companies because of very limited number of employees, the business owner is an accountant, HR, business development.

10.Execution – How do you execute Your Idea? Frankly, the success of your company depends mostly of the style and substance of the management team. A leader must be adaptable and must Lead by EXAMPLE. According to Thomas Edison’s citation: 1% Idea and 99% Perspiration?. Define a process in order to more efficiently coordinate business’s resources: People, Machines or Information systems and Capital.

Warmest Regards.

Leon Fangnigbe CEO & Chief Software Architect at MLFSolutions | BestCampaignPro

STOP USING THOSE EXPENSIVE E-MARKETINGS …..BUT

Due the to the recent economic crisis, many businesses, particularly small and midsized companies discovered that diverting some of their marketing budgets(reduced budgets) to great Email Marketing offered more effective results than traditional direct Marketing.

Email Marketing is more than a turnkey approach. That is why MLFSolutions(http://www.MLFSolutions.com), which is a Full Internet Marketing Service, specialized in Website Design and development, SEO\SEM, Social Media Marketing, E-Marketing to Custom Software Development, has created an on-demand, Software as a Service (SaaS) E-Marketing called BestCampaignPro.

So Have YOU heard about BestCampaignPro?(http://www.BestCampaignPro.com)

Here are THE REASONS TO USE BestCampaignPro TO STAND OUT FROM YOUR COMPETITORS AND TO BE IN FRONT OF YOUR PROSPECTS AND CUSTOMERS:

•Create Emails In Minutes – No technical expertise needed!, choose from designs, it’s that easy! Or if you prefer, use your own HTML page.
•Build Your own List – A free subscriber form helps you collect website visitors email addresses and other detail information, Create many free subscriber forms from the same account!
•Check Who Responds – Track your success in real time. See who opens, clicks, compare campaigns,unsubscribes and much more…
•Save Money – Pay as you go, or send unlimited emails with a monthly subscription!
•View Your Business Grow – Get traffic to your site or retail store anytime! Convert prospects into customers, so increase your ROI !

Warmest Regards.
Leon Fangnigbe
http://www.MLFSolutions.com | http://www.BestCampaignPro.com