Category: Customer Conversations

Small Business: Your Best Customer Content Creator is You!

Small Business: Your Best Customer Content Creator is You!

Don’t hire a marketing agency to create content.  Don’t outsource your content creation to oDesk.  What kind of quality will you really get from someone that you have to explain your business value to via computer screens? As a startup founder or business owner you’re the best person to create the valuable customer-pain-focused content that [...]

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Know Your Customer: How to Steps from Techstars

Know Your Customer: How to Steps from Techstars

If your startup or small business is looking for fresh inspiration, check out a meaty new book: Do More Faster, techstars lessons to accelerate your startup, by David Cohen and Brad Feld. Techstars is a new kind of business accelerator for startups founded in Boulder, Colorado that provides early stage investment and hands-on mentoring. The [...]

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Marketing Tactics That Work: How Social Media Led to Followers, Customers, and Sales for Startup GoGo Gear

Marketing Tactics That Work: How Social Media Led to Followers, Customers, and Sales for Startup GoGo Gear

I love social media marketing success stories about small businesses and startups operating on a tiny budget.  If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur looking to create awareness, earn interest and actually win paying customers on a budget, blogger Mary Hall’s recent interview with the founder of GoGo Gear is a must-read. Marketing expert [...]

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Rev-up Your Small Business Website with an Online Video

Rev-up Your Small Business Website with an Online Video

Small business owners and marketers can always use an online marketing tool that’s proven to increase interest and sales among their  (hard-earned) web site visitors. Product or service Internet videos can increase the so-called ‘conversion rate’ of a website according to some business owners’ anecdotal feedback. Photo: My partner’s video cameras, Flip Minnow and 3-year [...]

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Business Growth Goals and Content Marketing Tactics (Part 1)

Business Growth Goals and Content Marketing Tactics (Part 1)

This begins a series of posts for small business owners, startups and B2B marketers that are new to using social media to grow their companies.  Or, are ready to reconsider established marketing tactics and look for new ways to achieve customer and business growth. Every dollar and every minute you spend on marketing tactics is [...]

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HOW TO: Listen Online to Find Content Topics that Lead Prospects to Your Website

HOW TO: Listen Online to Find Content Topics that Lead Prospects to Your Website

Customers love valuable, specific, no-nonsense, problem-solving content that’s easily accessible on the Web.  Content  that answers questions, saves time or helps to meet goals.   As a business owner, creating and publishing strong web content is a key marketing tactic at your disposal. You’ll want an ongoing process to create and publish web site content that [...]

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How to Find Content for Your Small Business Blog or Web Site

How to Find Content for Your Small Business Blog or Web Site

Looking for content ideas for your small business blog or web site?  Read on! The three most common questions that business owners/marketers ask me when the subject of starting a small business blog comes up (right after, jeez do I really need a blog?): “What do I write about on a blog?” “What kind of [...]

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How to Create a Successful Business-to-Business Blog

How to Create a Successful Business-to-Business Blog

If you’re a small business owner or marketer in the business-to-business space, successful social media examples are hard to come by.   But I have unearthed a sterling example for you! Well, I actually did my reading over the weekend thanks to the Groundswell team… In their newest book Charlene Li (formerly of Forrester and founder [...]

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How a Manufacturer Put Its Customers First in a White Paper and Won Leads, Positive PR

How a Manufacturer Put Its Customers First in a White Paper and Won Leads, Positive PR

When working to make their company better known, JER Envirotech put its customers first and created a great success story from a lead generation campaign and more. According to a case study at MarketingProfs (subscription required) JER Envirotech (TM) needed to make itself better known and more credible.   JER makes  eco-friendly thermoplastic biocomposite materials used [...]

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Engineering Meets Web 2.0: A Temperature Measurement CEO Success (Part 2)

Engineering Meets Web 2.0: A Temperature Measurement CEO Success (Part 2)

If you’re interested in how social media and Web 2.0 are moving into small business, this post is for you. Yesterday we began our interview (here) with Jim Burns, CEO of Burns Engineering, about how his small business decided to adopt Web 2.0 and social media in order to have rich conversations with their customers [...]

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