How to Make Your Small Business Look Big

October 21, 2013

Small business naturally have a limited amount of resources. This causes them to often work from project to project rather than look at the objective of their business as a whole. When you start out small, you need to maximize your core strengths to appear bigger to your audience.

Define your niche. It allows you to focus on a specific kind of audience rather than everyone as a whole. By understanding that, you can concentrate on aiming to please that crowd and you will have more loyal customers in that area. If you are a small business, it’s difficult to convince everyone to work with you. However, if you go towards a more specified crowd, you can cater to their specific needs successfully and be able to have a loyal crowd and work on other aspects of the business as well without worrying as much.

Create a business plan to get things done. When you do things without a plan, you are likely to be all over the place. Action plans set things in place and help you with time management as well. This method gets more things done and helps you to keep track of what you have done and what is still necessary. This will keep you more organized and is the foundation of your business.

Consistent brand presentation makes it seem like you are a big company that is highly organized. Many small companies feel as if they can’t fully brand themselves without having a large budget. This isn’t true. Take your core values and place them in each of your marketing aspects whenever presenting yourself. Consistency from everything including a logo, font, color scheme, layout, etc. defines your company as a brand rather than just another business. When people see that those definitive things, they should reflect them upon your company.

Create effective content. A small amount of effective content is better than a myriad of common content. When you show people that you can give them information that others can’t, then you can become a main source to viewers. This is very important because it makes you stand out among the rest. People will turn to you rather than having to present yourself to others. The advantage of this from a small company is what can turn you into a big brand.

Regardless of your budget and the actual size of your company, it is what your customers see from you that matter the most. They want to see the experience and professionalism of a large company to get the results they want. There are many companies that seem big on the outside but are actually only composed of a small number of people and we are here to help you get in the right direction.

Tips and Techniques for Company Blogging

February 6, 2012

If there’s one thing that’s become more important to companies on the Internet since the Google Penguin update, it’s blogging. Since the update, unique, interesting content has become the focus for sites all over the web. As mentioned in my last post, it’s important to write with keywords in mind, but the keywords should naturally flow into the writing, not vice-versa. I’ve created a list using examples from some small time company blogs to give you a better idea of what you can do for your own company.

1. Find the right subject

Learning what to blog about is one of the biggest battles when starting out a blog. The most important factor in figuring this out is to identify your audience. It’s obvious that you’ll want to write content that people coming to your website will want to read. A lot of ecommerce blogs will feature tips or informative articles about a product category. For example, The Natural sells products such as vitamins, herbs, holistic foods and natural household products. In its blog, it writes articles about the body that range from facts about the digestive system to virus protection. These are the right articles to make visitors aware of the benefits of natural food and product choices.

2. Create a schedule

Think Crafts!, a blog by Create For Less, writes “Free Stuff Friday” posts in which they allow readers to enter into a giveaway to win featured products from Create for Less. They ask a question and then pick the best answer for the winner.  This is great for any ecommerce site with room to giveaway some extra stock items and it keeps the blog on track. Creating a schedule like this helps readers to keep up with your content. Maybe you only want to feature tips on Wednesday and how-to’s on Monday? You’ll be surprised how much easier a schedule will be for you too.

3. Link to your products

Linking is an important part of an ecommerce blog. In Zooplus.co.uk’s “Zooblog,” the company writes articles about pet care such as “How to Wash Your Dog” or “5 Signs Your Cat May Be Sick.” Each article is informative and offers links to products that would be helpful to treat the subject at hand. In a world of many choices, a recommendation is much appreciated.

4. Act natural

Don’t be afraid to be yourself so long as you’re not brash, offensive and bringing the company down. Stiff language only goes so far, which is another thing I like about Think Crafts!. The blog also invites guest bloggers, which is probably the most natural of all considering we all have friends. If you know someone who you believe would write an insightful or entertaining post, ask them to guest blog.