5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Good Content

5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Good Content
10 Ways to Improve Your Business with Mobile Technology
12+ Pinterest Apps and Tools for Pinning While Mobile
$1 Billion Tumblr Deal Turns 26-Year-Old Founder into Mega-Millionaire
Stay Alive. It’s Good for Business

Posted: 20 May 2013 04:30 PM PDT

good content

Getting good content is difficult enough. It often needs to come from a professional SEO writer, not just a professional writer, and that comes at a cost. However, what does a business do once the content’s there? It can’t promote itself, and this will take some Web savvy. Otherwise, it’s a complete waste of money and that’s something no business wants. Below are some tips.

5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Good Content

1. Use Analytics

Google Analytics is a free and very user-friendly tool that every business should be using. It can quickly tell site owners how many bouncebacks are happening, which pages are popular, which pages are sinking and in general how much traffic is coming to a site.

By using Google Analytics integration, owners can ensure that quality content is on all pages and take a closer look at the pages that are really excelling or not performing.

2. Keep it Updated

Even the best content can have a shelf life depending on the company and the content itself. While it’s crucial to invest in quality content at all times, don’t forget about updates and fresh content. This is especially critical for businesses that provide content on changing industries.

Stale content is useless even if it is good.

3. Promote, Promote, Promote

Nobody’s going to read great content if they don’t know about it. Promote new blogs or articles on every social media page, share it with bloggers, post videos on YouTube and generally get it out there.

Follow the rules for helping content go viral and make sure the writers are aware of this goal.

4. Use the Right Anchor Text

Anchor text is an important part of SEO. It’s the text that describes what a link is and can make someone click on an article–or not. Anchor text should never be duplicated and should incorporate SEO key phrases as well as marketing tactics.

Consider it the headline for the headline.

5. Turn It Into a White Paper or Best Of

Utilize the best content and get the most out of it. Best of lists, white papers or even mini-books that are sold on Amazon can all squeeze a little extra money out of existing high-quality content. For business owners looking to improve the bottom line, this is a must.

Make sure enough good content is available before starting this endeavor.

Great content is great, but it can’t succeed alone. Put in a little elbow grease to make the most of it.

Online Marketer Photo via Shutterstock

The post 5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Good Content appeared first on Small Business Trends.

10 Ways to Improve Your Business with Mobile Technology

Posted: 20 May 2013 01:30 PM PDT

improve your business

A recent study shows how reliant small businesses have become on mobile technology. The 2013 AT&T Small Business Technology Poll says 85 percent of small businesses now use some kind of smartphone. And 80 percent of small firms founded less than two years ago use tablets, the survey also showed.

Customers are becoming more mobile too. The International Data Corporation, a global marketing intelligence firm, says the number of smartphones shipped now outpaces the number of “regular” cell phones worldwide. Tablets are on the increase with customers too.

Improve Your Business With Mobile Technology

Add Mobile Payment Options for Customer Convenience ~ USA Today

Uyen Nguyen owner of Lemongrass Truck, a growing food truck business, reckons her budding company would be nowhere at all without mobile technology. Her company uses tablets to take credit card payments at points of sales and uses social media to let mobile customers know where their truck will be located from day to day. Mobile technology makes sense to Nguyen because her whole business is mobile.

Arm Your Sales Team With Mobile Tools ~Tweak Your Biz

Zoe Maldonado, blogger at TechBreach, writes about the tools of the modern sales force. These include smartphones, PDAs, laptops and tablets. Smartphones and tablets provide mobile sales teams with constant communications and productivity tools including email, internet scheduling and calendars. Mobile business applications allow teams to do presentations, engage in social collaboration and even prepare invoices.

Use QR Codes to Engage Customers in the Mobile Space ~ Right Hand Planning

Online marketing and SEO consultant Peter Semple gives two case studies showing how small businesses can do this. In one instance, a savvy auto mechanic sent out a direct mail piece with a QR code allowing customers to download his mobile app. In another, a local promotional clothing company offers customers a protective sleeve for wireless credit cards. On the sleeve is printed a QR code to the company’s mobile store.

Add Cloud-Based Software-as-a-Service for Mobile ~ TechCrunch

Companies like T-Mobile have begun offering cloud-based services for mobile customers, including telephony features like voicemail, CallerID, conference bridges and more. Increasingly, these services will now be available for the small business market, too. This latest package is aimed at companies with 20 or fewer employees.

Increase Agility and Reduce Costs ~ Firmology

Boil it all down and the real benefit of mobile technology is agility and efficiency. Sam Frymer, founder of personal consulting firm the Awesomeness Institute, points to the time you save sharing information instantly via email, social media, or other electronic documents from no matter where you are. Add to this eliminating paper from your world completely and you can begin to see the increased efficiency and decreased costs.

Use Mobile Apps for Management Tasks ~ Digital Journal

A study by email marketing company Constant Contact finds small businesses are using mobile apps for a host of management activities. The study found small businesses most often used apps for activities like scheduling and time management, customer communications, GPS and mapping and accounting and invoicing.

Do Banking in the Mobile World ~ American Banking

There’s at least one other small business task you can complete using mobile apps, though it’s a task that didn’t show up on the list of popular activities in the Constant Contact study. Small businesses can use mobile apps to do their banking too. Check out the latest feature on Jot, a mobile app Chase provides its business customers.

Use Mobile Video Messaging Apps ~ OurHelix Blog

Mobile video apps aren’t limited to Vine, the 6-second looping video app Twitter acquired while still in development and launched a few months ago. There are also apps like Tout and Viddy. Amy Nedoss, strategic direction and business development leader for OurHelix, takes us through some of the basic differences between these apps and then gives us an overview of what businesses can do with each.

Create a Mobile Friendly Website ~ Entrepreneur

Your website should be easy for mobile users to view. One way to accomplish this is to simplify your web design so it is easier to view on a smaller screen like the one on a smartphone. Another is to create a special mobile version of your site designed specifically with mobile visitors in mind.

Look Into Responsive Design ~ Small Business Trends

When looking into creating a mobile friendly website, one term that keeps coming up is “responsive design.” Simply put, this means creating a website that is not designed for a specific format. Instead, this kind of website resizes itself based upon the screen of the device upon which it is being viewed. In practice, this may be the most versatile solution for the issue of making your site friendly to mobile users.

Have we missed something? Tell us how you’re using mobile technology to improve your business today.

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12+ Pinterest Apps and Tools for Pinning While Mobile

Posted: 20 May 2013 11:00 AM PDT

Pinterest is not just another copycat social networking site. It focuses on the age-old adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words." Who has time to read a thousand words all the time, anyway? Sometimes a picture is all we have mindshare for. Pinterest allows you to collaborate and to stimulate your audience by sharing images and visually engaging them.

And today with the growth of smartphones and tablets, more of us are networking socially and consuming content via mobile devices. Using some of the following Pinterest apps will only make your experience that much more profitable, and they all work on the go with mobile devices.

12 Pinterest Apps for Mobile

If you want to post to Pinterest from your smartphone or tablet, you first need to download an app to your mobile device.

iPhone and iPad - The granddaddy Pinterest mobile app of them all is the Pinterest iPhone app. There used to be a separate iPad app, but now it has been combined into a single iOS app that can also be used on the iPhone, iPad and the iPod Touch.

Android – If you have a device on an Android platform, you will need to download an Android app in order for Pinterest to work. Although you will not have the same functionality with the Pinterest Android app as you do with the iOS app, each allows you to pin your pictures, which is the important part.

Pinterest Pin It Button makes pinning easier and greatly improves the functionality of iPhone and Android apps. Just go to the goodies page and drag it to your toolbar. (There are several apps for Pinterest all with this same or a similar name and different functionality, so follow the link to get this one.)

Just today Pinterest announced that it had made its Pin It button available in a number of website-specific mobile apps. Those apps include: Behance, Brit+Co, Etsy, Fotopedia, Jetsetter, Modcloth, Snapguide, TED, The North Face, and Zulily. You have to have switched to the “new” Pinterest look with it’s larger pins, to be able to see these pins.

Windows phones – There’s no official Pinterest app for Windows phones, but one third-party Pinterest app, Scrapbook for Pinterest, is available. It seems to function well, but has the disadvantage of carrying ads or requiring subscription fees. However, if you have a Windows Phone, this may be the only way to be mobile with your Pinterest page currently. Scrapbook works with Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 7.5.

PinHog for Pinterest lets you be mobile, but allows you to minimize extra data charges while you are browsing the Web for pins. Check it out in the Google Play store. This unique Pinterest app allows you not only to browse while offline, but it also lets you schedule when you would like to pin items to your board.

PinReach is designed to let you know how well you are influencing others. It provides you with a "Klout" score to inform you about trends and let you know when your influence is waning, you know, before it is gone.

PinPuff lets you track trends and analyze how your Pinterest account is doing. PinPuff also calculates the monetary value of your Pins and what kind of traffic they are generating for you.

Snapito is for you if you prefer surfing the Web and taking screenshots for your Pinterest page. this app gives you a variety of easy ways to pin screenshots to your page, including a Pinterest Bookmarklet that lets you do this from your iPhone.

Wallo Pinterest allows you to use your mobile wallpaper to discover new images and travel destinations. You can pin things from your Android Live wallpaper, on Android devices.

Reachli (formerly Pinerly) has a user-friendly dashboard interface. It keeps you updated on your pin schedule, helps you locate like-minded users, and unfollow groups.

Wisestamp, while not a Pinterest-specific app, lets you add a follow button for your Pinterest account to the bottom of your emails. It features your latest pins.

Pin4Ever lets you create a backup of your pins on your Android or any storage device by using the Pinterest backup app. They have a simple signup process shown in the screenshot above.

Finally, be sure to check out our Pinterest Start Guide for Small Businesses. And if you already know how to use Pinterest, you might be interested in Pinterest analytics tools to tell how much traffic is going to your site.

The post 12+ Pinterest Apps and Tools for Pinning While Mobile appeared first on Small Business Trends.

$1 Billion Tumblr Deal Turns 26-Year-Old Founder into Mega-Millionaire

Posted: 20 May 2013 08:00 AM PDT

Have you ever dreamed of becoming a mega-millionaire with your next business idea? It’s a reality for 26-year-old David Karp. The founder of Tumblr, the popular social blogging platform, has become the latest tech tycoon almost overnight.

Today Yahoo officially announced plans to purchase the site Karp started at age 21 out of his mother’s Manhattan apartment. The Daily Mail has Karp’s story as a high school dropout who taught himself HTML. Karp then started his own computer consulting company before launching his incredibly popular platform.

Yahoo’s board of directors recently approved a $1.1 billion cash purchase price for Tumblr, according to a report from AllThingsD.com. In an official announcement, the companies said Tumblr would continue to operate as a separate business with CEO Karp at the helm.

Tumblr, a blogging platform that has following, sharing and other social features, gives Yahoo a stake in the social networking world, The New York Times observes. The platform also provides a source of user-generated content Yahoo management believes the company needs. How Yahoo would integrate Tumblr content into its current model remains to be seen.

Initially, the two companies will work to create advertising opportunities that are “seamless” and “enhance the user experience.” But a joint announcement was not specific about what kinds of advertising opportunities these might be.

Tumblr boasts 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day, 900 posts per second and 24 billion minutes spent on site each month. The two companies state in their joint release that this makes Tumblr one of the fastest growing media networks in the world.

Even Small Business Trends has a Tumblr presence.

The announcement said the deal is subject to the customary conditions and will close in the second half of the year.

Photo Source: Davids Log

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Stay Alive. It’s Good for Business

Posted: 20 May 2013 05:00 AM PDT

Entrepreneurs: here's something to add to the list of things academics have found will enhance the performance of your business.

Staying alive.

In a bit of novel research coming out of the United Kingdom, Professors Sascha Becker of the University of Warwick and Hans Hvide of the University of Aberdeen compared 341 private Norwegian companies where the majority owner passed away within the first ten years of company founding with similar companies started at the same time in which the owner remained alive. They found that the companies where the entrepreneur died performed worse in subsequent years.

The analysis showed that the companies whose founders passed away were 20 percent less likely than the others to be in operation two years later. Moreover, four years after the entrepreneur's death, those companies whose founders had perished had only 40 percent of the sales of the businesses whose owner-operators were still kickin’.

The authors figured out that poor company performance didn’t kill the founders. (We await some other enterprising academics to explore that question!) The sales and employment of the companies whose founders passed on were just as good as the others before the entrepreneurs died. The death of the founder was the cause of the company's problems, not the other way around.

The adverse effects of the founder's demise weren't the same for all businesses. The performance drops triggered by the founder's passing were worst for the youngest companies and for the businesses where the deceased entrepreneur had a large ownership stake.

In short, the study shows clear evidence that entrepreneurs matter for the performance of their companies.

But how?

Unfortunately, this study doesn't tell us about the impact of entrepreneur death. However, other studies suggest the myriad of ways that entrepreneurs matter. In some cases, company founders are very good leaders. Their passing is problematic because it puts someone less charismatic in charge of the company.

In other cases, the entrepreneur is a great sales person. Without him or her, the company just isn't as good at generating revenue.

In still other businesses, the founder has better control over costs or operations and keeps the business humming along more efficiently than those who follow in the CEO slot.

The performance decline documented in this study, however, needn't have occurred because the founder was more talented than the people who followed him or her. The founder's death could simply have disrupted the business in ways that made it hard for the companies to recover. Competitors might have swooped in and taken away customers while the firms were transitioning to new CEOs. Or creditors or suppliers might have become jittery and imposed stricter terms on the companies, raising their costs and hurting their performance.

You know, Apple's stock price has dropped a lot since Steve Jobs passed away. Maybe that's just the typical performance effect these authors found, just with a lot more zeros tacked on.

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