Portland is known for their street friendliness. Whether on a bike or on foot, the pedestrian can be confident that motorists are watching out for them.  While traveling recently, I was almost surprised that this isn’t always the case in other places throughout the country.  In other places the pedestrian must have confidence to take charge of the moment and just use the crosswalk, trusting the vehicles will stop.  If they don’t take their confidence seriously, vehicles just won’t stop.  They don’t wait for you, you have to make them wait.

This lesson reminds me that the same often applies to businesses and business owners. Whether buying, selling, or networking, businesspeople must take the reigns and take the steps to further their business efforts.  Be aggressive.  Be confident.  Create a goal, go after it and be unyielding to any obstacles. Don’t let others or circumstances determine your destiny, but rather, take solid action towards your future and the future of your business.

Jamie Teasdale – www.jjtsolutions.com

Most of us have grown up wanting to fit in. Acceptance and Diversity are common buzzwords in Human Resources departments these days. But thinking out of the box is striving to stand out and become distinctive. Marketers and Branding Consultants stress uniqueness, so what are we to do? I would recommend reading a small book that is revolutionizing how people view fear and rejection. The book is “Go For No” by Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz.

As you read this book you will discover that it is not only acceptable to fail, but it is mandatory to reach success. Learning by our mistakes is often painful, but so is developing strength and endurance. Few people are impressed with a sprinter who is fast out of the blocks, but quits part way through the race.

I am reminded of the story of the first Jamaican bobsled team in the 1988 Winter Olympics. After suffering a frightening crash, they finished the race by carrying their sled across the finish line. They were determined to complete the race even though they had no chance of a metal. They triumphed over defeat because they refused to quit!

Enjoy the book and learn to fail your way to success.

Ken Bear Cole

A Second Look Business Consulting LLC

I often meet business people who are not sure who are their most profitable customers. I find them scurrying, chasing what they think are valuable customers, only to discover it was a discarded penny. They are working hard running in a hundred different directions, but are not making any money. They often have high-income goals, but lack a business plan to arrive at their goal. Are you just chasing pennies?

Chasing pennies is a game that I sometimes play with my Granddaughter. We will be in a safe place with a concrete surface. I will toss a penny and she will run after it and return with a big smile. She is proud of herself for finding the penny. She gets excited when I shake the pennies in my hand. She is ready to run after the jingling, almost worthless coins. Are you doing the same, if so, STOP! Don’t spend any more money in advertising, printing, website or anything else. You must first discover the actual problem. You will probably need assistance in this evaluation. Too often we cannot see our own shortcomings.

Ask yourself a few questions:

1. Are you seeing enough customers each day? Today you need to advertising in many different areas. Website, Email, Print, Associations and Networking are all necessary for most businesses to get the word out about you.

2. What makes you unique and inviting? If you are not perceived as special or better, you will need to compete on price, which could become a race to destruction.

3. Where do my profitable customers hang out? You need to get to know and understand their motivations and buying habits. Gas stations seldom make money on fuel. They make their money on the snacks sold inside.

4. What need or desire are you fulfilling?

You can become profitable once you make the appropriate changes and customers discover you.

Ken Bear Cole
A Second Look Business Consulting LLC

Graphic Designers and Marketing Specialists will tell you to establish your business identity in the marketplace. Branding has become a huge industry with an emphasis on recognizable logos and slogans. But do you need to spend thousands of dollars to stand out among your competition? Let’s look a little deeper into the subject.

Small businesses typically have very limited advertising budgets. Most cannot afford $1,000 per month for print advertising, much less TV or Radio adds. So why spend $2,000 on a logo that few will see? Yes it may look cool, but will it bring in more customers? Will your customers decide to hire you because of your green bullfrog with big red lips? The answer is probably NO, at least not at the beginning of your business development.

Take a stroll through the isles of any store and tell me why you purchased a particular item. Was it because of a logo? It probably had more to do with price unless the manufacture has spent millions of advertising dollars on print and television adds.

For a small business, YOU are your brand!!! People choose you because of your sales and customer service skills. You will only become successful once you are trusted to fulfill your customer’s needs. Your red-lipped bullfrog is not the reason someone stopped by your restaurant. Location and quality of food played a much heavier roll in the decision. So keep your Branding cash and spend it on your advertising.

Ken Bear Cole

A Second Look Business Consulting LLC

Did you create a marketing strategy to justify your vision or focus your effort?

More often than not, when helping a small business develop their website, I discover they have NO marketing strategy.  Those who have written a strategy, more often than not, did so to justify their vision.

If you’ve never heard the phrase, then please allow me to introduce you to a new concept.  Niches bring riches!

If have not already created a Marketing Strategy, start today.  If you have created a Strategy that identifies EVERYBODY as your target customer, start your first rewrite today.

Your marketing strategy is a road map to using limited resources to succeed in your business.  Identifying fewer, more focused target customers will improve your conversion percentage.  Do some soul searching, and start with who you DON’T want as a customer.  Starting with who you don’t want will help you focus on the personality traits of those you do want as customers.

Why narrow your customer focus?  Because you do not have enough time in the typical work year to meet with everyone, you must prioritize your prospects by conversion opportunity.  Those with whom you have a natural personality clash with should be eliminated from your marketing strategy.  At some point in the transaction, your personality clash will become apparent and the business relationship will halt.

Develop a clear personality profile for your preferred client.  Then identify the things this personality type does for fun.  Find ways to market to those people where they are having fun.  Avoid the direct sales presentation and authentically injected your own personality into the presentation.  Let the laws of attraction bring your new customer to you and you’ll be impressed with how easy closing deals becomes.

The recession is rumored to have ended, yet unemployment continues to rise.  While this is not uncommon, unemployment always lags behind the economy, this article is NOT about economic.  Rather, I would like to help you make a VERY difficult decision with regards to building your business visibility on the search engines.

Add a business blog site to your website.  Ideally, your blog should be integrated with your website, but at the very least, create a company blog site and start writing.  For FREE information on how to blog, please visit my companion website, BusinessBlogging.net.

Here are ten reasons why you should add a business blog to your internet marketing strategy.

1. Blogs are a great way to introduce new products and services to visitors without recoding.
2. Blogs are a great way to generate repeat traffic – pure gold.
3. Blogs tell you what customers like and don’t like – first-hand market research.
4. A blog is a great way to keep product reviews in front of your buyers.
5. A blog entry can be easily syndicated to other sites – all pointing back to your site.
6. A blog is easy to set up, easy to maintain.
7. Search engines love blogs. Tips for gaining traffic are included in our article “SEO Your Blog“.
8. A blog keeps your site fresh.
9. A blog has become part of visitors’ expectations.
10. A blog is lots of fun.

All of us on this business community are seeking new ways to promote and sell our wares.  We know the value of Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM), but do we all understand the value of business blogging as it related to WOM?

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point.  For the last week or ten days I’ve been biting at the bit to write this article, but I wanted to wait until I finished the book.  Not only did Malcom ask the questions why some ideas took off, but he answered societal questions on what stifles momentum.  To bring Malcolm’s thoughts into perspective for us business folks in Portland Oregon, I’ll ask a question that directly pertains to US.

Why blog on Portland Business Community?

“The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.“

America is suffering through a very difficult recession. Without arguing politics, let’s assume for a moment that times are still bad and maybe getting worse.  Most, if not all, of us are members of “other” networking groups (chamber’s, lead sharing, associations, etc.) and our goal is to build new connections with other people who may need our services or know someone who needs our service.

Those of us who’ve been around a while know the “Card-Droppers” as me centered folks who will almost never carry our message to their network; but instead attend the groups for just long enough to fail at getting any business before moving on to the next failed networking venture.  I call this process Group Cold Calling.  Work a room, make the same sales pitch over and over and hope that some business is gained.

A Better Approach to networking

Get to know the business people around you, help them solve their problems and they’ll be your very best friend–helping bring you LOTS of new business.

Business Blogging allows you to help people you’ve never met; building relationships with people who find your idea over the internet.

PortlandBusinessCommunity.com, being a FREE business blogging site for business people means your audience may have found your words because they were brought to the site by search phrase liked to another article.

PortlandBusinessCommunity.com, using Malcolm’s terms, is a Connector.  The authors on this site are the Mavens and the search engine become the Salesmen.

Unlike your elevator speech at a chamber meeting, your words in your business blog article live forever in the sales channel (i.e. search engines).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics

Business owners that want to “do it themselves” can get confused about all the information available for Search Engine Optimization.  Although it is true that SEO has a great deal of layers to it – there are some very basic strategies that business owners can do themselves.  Many business owners think they know a few things about Search Engine Optimization ~ it is expensive, difficult, and needs to be outsourced. I am here to tell you a secret – are you ready? Are you listening? SEO is not hard, not complicated, and not beyond your reach. It is actually easy, just time consuming. The most basic concept is this – use keyword phrases that you want search engines to index for your company. That is it – the whole concept. Now for the strategy ~ where do you use these keywords? Here is a rundown of several places (not an exhaustive list) where keywords need to be utilized:

• Page Titles (each page needs to be different)
• Article Titles – These titles need to be Header1 or H1 tags
• Articles need to use subtitles – Header 2 – Header 6 – like an outline
• Anchor text (the link that is actually clicked is the anchor)
• Picture alt and title tags
• Meta tags

Although this is not a complete list ~ everything on this list is important and completely within your ability to do – as long as you are using some sort of content management system.

Page Titles

Every page has a title tag that will show in the browser title bar.  Each page needs to be unique.  If you are using the same title for all pages then you will be considered a search engine spammer – if each page was truly the same then you only need a one page site.  Carefully consider your titles.  Don’t use ”Home” – instead use something like Web Design Vancouver Wa: Premium Websites.  This title gets the message across that it is a website design site and means much more than Home to the search engines.

Article Titles

If you are running a Blog then make sure all Articles or Posts are using the H1 tag for the Title, and that your keywords are in the title – preferably at the beginning of the title.  This is why you will often see something like this – Search Engine Optimization: Basics for Business Owners. By using the colon tactic it makes sense to have the main keyword phrase at the beginning with a short explanation to follow.  Remember how you title your articles should also be how the link to the article appears.  Having your link include keywords is very important to rankings.  Another great Title would be 6 Easy SEO Secrets – having a number in the title always seems to do well.

Articles need to use sub headers

Sub headers need to be H2-H6 tags and they need to be organized like an outline.  Not only does this make the article easy to follow, easy to skim, and easy to read – it also allows for keyword phrases to be used in the headers.  Search engines give more weight to keywords in H1 tags than keywords in H2 tags all the way down to the H6 tags.  The top of the articles has the most weight for keyword usage.

Keywords in Anchor Text

Search engines place very high value on other websites that link to your website.  It is like a vote of confidence for your website.  The text used in the incoming link is also very important and is called anchor text.  It must contain some of your keywords in order to get the full SEO value from this strategy.  “Click here” won’t cut it.  By using your keywords and linking to your site with the same keywords it gives the search engines a clear understanding of what your site is about, and how to rank it.

Picture alt and title tags

All images used need to be labeled with the alt tags.  This makes the website compliant for people that use screen readers.  It also gives you another instance of using a keyword phrase.  The alt tag is what comes up if for some reason the image does not load, and the title tag is what shows when the image is hovered over by your mouse.  Both should be used and the words used need to be both relevant to the image and using keywords.  This is one area that is usually overlooked.

Meta tags

Meta tags are not used as much as they used to be.  It used to be that search engines went from the meta tags to get a description and keywords for ranking the site.  Now search engines usually use the actual content of the site for their listings.  This does not mean that they are not important.  They are often overlooked, but should still be used.  Also the keywords should reflect the actual page, not be generalized for the whole site.

By keeping these basic Search Engine Optimization tips in mind when updating or creating your web content your website will greatly benefit with higher placement in the search result pages.  Once this is done if more help is needed then you can feel better about hiring more optimization ~ knowing you did all the easy stuff yourself.

To the seasoned Network/Multi-Level Marketer this has almost become a non-question. The fielding of which has become nearly as involuntary as sneezing. The answer is almost universally “no” or “what do you mean?” The resulting explanation generally pacifies, at least temporarily those skeptics that might be examining your business. However, it seldom really addresses the core understanding of what a “Pyramid” really is.

Pyramids, according to Federal law are illegal. A true “Pyramid” is dependent on a constant influx of participants at the base in order to move others to the top. Multi-Level or Network Marketing dispels this requirement due to the fact that if a real product or service is being sold, the business will continue regardless of the influx of new participants. Additionally, “Pyramids” will require a fee, sometimes nominal and sometimes substantial, which will be paid partially to the company and partially to the recruiting agent. Most states have outlawed this practice and deemed it uniquely an act of “pyramiding”. A legitimate Network/Multi-Level Marketing company my have a startup fee, but it is usually only enough to handle administrative services and initial supplies and marketing materials.

The only real difference between Network or Multi-Level Marketing and traditional business models is the number of hands that a product or service has to pass through before it reaches the consumer. The true mark of any business, is to ask the question, “Would people own this product or service if they were not involved in the business of marketing it”? Many Network/MLM’rs become marketing distributors for no other reason than to receive a discount for their product or service.

It’s true that the earnings for being self employed are unpredictable, but the advantage of being self-employed in a Network/Multi-Level marketing business is that you can out earn your “sponsor” or the person that hired and trained you. What would happen in a traditional J-O-B if you started outperforming the person that trained you or even worse your supervisor? In Network/Multi-Level Marketing there are no buffers, either on the top or the bottom. Success and failure are an act of your own efforts.

To most Network/Multi-Level Marketers, anyone that works a traditional J-O-B is involved in a “Pyramid”. You go to work for a company at an entry level. There are lots of you at that level. In order to oversee things there are a few supervisors. These supervisors are usually amenable to department heads, who in turn usually answer to any one of a number of upper management administrators. Upper management usually has a CEO or owner that is ultimately at the top of the…oh wait…isn’t this one of those “Pyramid things?”

Gary Russell
GoSmallBiz.com
www.GaryLRussell.com
www.DefendMyLife.com
503-519-3592

Whatever you’re in business to do, there’s going to be someone else in a related industry.  Go out and meet as many of these people as you can.  Build a network among them and share what leads you have.  If you’re in real estate, you’re probably going to be able to give a few contractors a heads up about construction in the area.  If you’re in mortgage banking, you can probably pass a few clients to a realtor as well.

Take a minute and think about your perfect customer.  Think about what needs they have that make them a good target for your business.  Now think about what other needs they might have that are either related or unrelated to your business.

I met a man once who counseled the recently laid-off and helped them redefine their career path.  His perfect customer was someone between the ages of 40 and 60 who had yet to decide what they wanted to be when they grew up.  He spent a lot of time networking with college advisors who would frequently touch base with older non-traditional college students (men and women in their 30s and 40s who were going back to school to change jobs).

Being able to identify your customer is big.  Knowing how to identify their ancillary needs and the industries that cater to them is even bigger.  Building a lead network is a way to build you revenue without stepping up direct-to-market sales.  Just think of how much more productive you can be if customers are knocking on your door rather than the other way around.

Eric Mann
Jumping Duck Media | Mindshare Strategy