How good would it be for your business if you could give every agent in your sales organization their own microsite online?

If you could give them a new tool to help attract new customer leads, get customer referrals and fulfill requests for information?

And what if the process of getting all these of microsites was laughably easy and didn’t require even one IT geek?

Plus, give you an online dashboard where you can see the activity of every agent’s or franchisee’s microsite, including how many people visited, how many requested appointments and information and referred friends?

Well, it’s entirely possible with LinkBox™

Microsites in minutes, made easy:
• Easy to sign up
• Easy to change your messages and offers
• Easy for your customers to redeem offers and ask for appointments
• Easy for customers to refer friends
• Easy to promote your microsites via Facebook and Twitter
• Easy to track usage stats, appointments and referrals

LinkBox™ is a stand-alone system that requires no complicated IT integration, yet it can be branded seamlessly to match your corporate image, including your company logo, colors and product names.

Get a free Linkbox demo

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Tweetups are great for networking, meeting like-minded local people and promoting your business. These valuable tools can help maximize the success and functionality of your Tweetup.

Manage your tweetup guest list with Twtvite. You can even use Twtvite to print out name tags with guests’ Twitter names, avatars and usernames.

Hosting a paid Tweetup? Collect Tweetup admission fees with Eventbrite. Eventbrite can collect money through secure credit card processing, PayPal or Google Checkout.

In addition to promoting your Tweetup through twitter, of course, you can promote your tweetup with Meetup.com and Upcoming.com

Use Twitterfall.com to create a Twitterwall. This is a real-time updated, animated list of everyone tweeting with your hashtag. Project your Twitterall on a wall so everyone at your Tweetup can see it and be movitated to add a tweet, further promoting your event successfully.

Record your Tweetup or stream it live with Usstream.tv

For Wordpress users, Tweetuptheme.com makes it easy to promote your Tweetup website. Just upload the tweetUp theme into your Wordpress themes folder, adjust a few simple settings and enter your Tweetup event just like you would enter a normal Wordpress post.

One great feature of Tweetuptheme is the live RSVP system to help you see who’s coming. When users RSVP, they automatically send out tweets informing people that they’ve RSVPed for the event, with a link to your Tweetup Site where others can learn about your Tweetup and also RSVP.

The embedded Google map makes it easy for your Tweetup attendees to find your location.

Use any or all of these tools to make your next Tweetup a huge success!

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A company called PaperG has two new services – Flyerboard and PlaceLocal – to let advertisers and publishers automatically generate online ads and flyers and place them online.

Flyerboard is a virtual bulletin board that contains clickable flyers. Upon clicking, the flyer is expanded and more detailed copy is revealed (if it exists). The company claims a click-through rate (CTR) of up to three times higher than traditional banner ads.

Create your flyer using any existing image without having to fiddle with file size, pixel, or format specs. Your flyer will automatically include email sharing, integration to social media and a local built-in map.

You will get real-time impression and click stats for your Flyerboard ad. See what the virtual bulletin board looks like in an actual website.

PlaceLocal automatically builds your custom rich-media online display ad by scraping information, reviews, logos, awards and photos that are relevant to your product, service or company from the web. It’s as simple as entering your business name and location. In seconds, you see the display ad it creates for you.

Your ad includes a map and a way for viewers to refer friends to the ad. You can easily edit your ad once it is ready. If the business doesn’t have a website, PlaceLocal will automatically generate one.

In all, these are two great services to help local businesses advertise online and help publishers such as newspapers and TV stations provide an online advertising service for their local business clients.

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Getting ready to launch a SEO or SEM campaign? This is a valuable free tool from Microsoft adCenter Labs. Use it to predict search volume and demographic profiles.

It forecasts impression count and demographics for each keyword or longtail keyword phrase you enter. Just enter your list in the Tool Input box and separate them with semi-colons, then click submit.

This keyword forecast tool utilizes time series forecasts to predict the future impressions of your keywords. It even adjusts for seasonality and historical trends. Your results can be displayed as Flash, text or pictures.

Try the keyword forecast tool.

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Good news for merchants and small businesses. Now you can accept payments anywhere (at a flea market, for instance) with no merchant account required.

You just plug Square’s credit card device into your iPhone, iPad or Android phone (Square promises support for other devices soon).

Then you can start accepting card payments (you can also use Square to track your cash payments). There are no contracts, monthly fees or hidden costs. You pay a small fee per transaction: 2.75% + 15¢; card-present (swiped) rate or 3.5% + 15¢; card-not-present (keyed-in) rate.

An intuitive control lets your payers give you a tip (by percentage or as a dollar amount).

You can get your receipts sent instantly to your email or mobile phone and then access them online.

Instantly see how much you’ve earned for the day, broken out by tips, tax and payment method. You can then download your data into a standard format to work with your favorite program.

Is Square secure? Yes, it exceeds all industry standard security practices and compliance requirements, such as PCI Level 1 and PA-DSS

When you sign up for Square and submit your address, they will send you a free card reader and Square sticker that says “Pay with Square”

If you use an iPad, you can set up ’shelves’ of all your items and services. Assign each one a name, price, picture, and description. Square will then automatically assemble your most popular items on the first page.

Cardholders can benefit by creating a Square account, too.

You can speed up and secure every payment. With photo verification, Square users can visually confirm you are the card holder.

If you are a loyal customer of a Square merchant, Square will alert them.

You can see all of your Square receipts in one simple view and browse photos of every item you purchased.

Visit Square’s website at squareup.com

Watch a video about Square

credit: Squareup.com

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Banner ads have become less effective than text links over the past several years.

Chalk it up to banner blindness and banner burnout.

People visiting websites have become ‘trained’ to bypass banner ads. Some advertisers tried making their banner ads harder to ignore by adding movement or flashing. This seems to have made website visitors even more motivated to turn a blind eye.

Most website visitors look at sites in an F-shaped pattern.

In other words, they scan the masthead (the top of the F) and then go down and across the page where the content normally appears. (the stem and limb of the F)

Heatmaps from eyetracking studies show that the eye is drawn to areas on the web page that are not populated by ads. Website visitors seeking quick information do not allow themselves to be distracted by banner ads. Website visitors engrossed in reading an article are averse to looking away from it.

The heatmaps also demonstrate how website visitors ignore page elements that look like ads, even if they are not!

To combat banner blindness, make your ad look more like a component of the web page content and make sure the message is relevant to the information or subject that the website visitor sought.

Banner burnout is another issue to be wary about.

A study conducted by DoubleClick revealed that after four impressions banner ad click-through rates (CTR) drop from an average of 2.7% to less than 1%.

To combat banner burnout, prepare several ads and rotate them frequently.

By spending a little extra time on combating banner blindness and burnout, you should see better click-through rates – and a better return on investment.

More tips for better-performing banner ads

credits:
Image Space Media
useit.com

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If you’re like most Internet advertisers, you put a lot of thought into your keyword list, but what about your negative keyword list?

Negative keywords are essential to an effective keyword list. Including negative keywords in your ad group means that your ads won’t appear for search queries with those words.

After all, why waste your ad budget on unqualified traffic?

Filtering out these undesirable impressions let you reach the most relevant prospective customers, therefore reducing your cost-per-click (CPC), and increasing your ROI.

To add negative keywords, just put a minus sign (-) before each word or phrase.

How to find negative keywords for your list

1. Put your positive keyword in a Google search. Then study the search results for words that don’t apply to your product or service. For example, if you sell computers and use the word ‘computer’, you may see results for ‘computer classes’. You would make ‘classes’ a negative keyword.

2. Visit the competition’s sites. If you only sell desktop computers and your competitor sells laptop computers, make ‘laptop’ a negative keyword.

3. Make use of the Google Keyword Tool. Check the ‘use synonyms’ box. Turn any of those words that don’t apply into negative keywords.

One example of a negative keyword list.

Sometimes thinking negatively can have positive results!

credits:
adwords.google.com
clixmarketing.com
engineready.com

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Groupon is a popular new website that sends subscribers in each city a daily e-mail that contains one heavily discounted bargain from a local business.

Launched in 2008, Groupon has more than 3.7 million subscribers who receive their daily e-mail offers. More than 3,000 businesses have signed on to offer these deals.

Groupon works a lot differently than just sending out your own coupons or putting your coupon in the newspaper.

1. Your business doesn’t send Groupon a dime. If Groupon subscribers want an offer, they must pay for it in advance on Groupon’s website. Groupon then takes a cut of this payment, typically 50% – and you get the other 50%.

2. The offer isn’t valid unless a predetermined number of coupons are sold in a 24-hour period. In addition to email, Groupon also uses social media like Twitter and Facebook to get the word out about your offer.

Businesses that have used Groupon have reported a very large influx of business, not only on the day of the offer, but with repeat business from Groupon offer redeemers who then come back.

Here is an example of a Groupon offer that ran in Tampa.

It shows you the deal, the discount, the savings, the time left to buy and how many people have bought it. It lists highlights of the offer and shows a photo of the business.

Groupon also writes a description of your business.

Some tips for using Groupon successfully and preventing the experience from becoming too costly or overwhelming.

Do the math. It’s typical for businesses to offer discounts of 50 percent or more to Groupon customers. Then Groupon takes about half of what you make from the offer. Can you afford to sell a product or service at this discount? (It can be worth it to get new customers to try out your business.)

Set a limit. You may want to specify the maximum number of coupons you want to sell. Your Groupon offer may lead to more business than you can handle.

Be careful about including your phone number. If you give a phone number in your Groupon offer, you may be swamped with phone calls. You might want to use an online reservation system instead.

Use sparingly. Offering coupons too often can cause customers to shop only when they have one.

Groupon has some informative videos about how your business can get more customers.

As of this writing, Groupon is in these cities

Albuquerque Atlanta Austin Baltimore Boston Charlotte Chicago Cincinnati Cleveland Columbus Dallas Denver Detroit Fort Worth Fresno Houston Indianapolis Jacksonville Kansas City Las Vegas LA LA-Inland LA-Orange County Louisville Memphis Miami Milwaukee Minneapolis / St Paul Nashville New York New Orleans Oklahoma City Omaha Orlando Philadelphia Phoenix Pittsburgh Portland Providence Raleigh/Durham Salt Lake City San Antonio San Diego San Francisco / East Bay San Jose Seattle Sioux Falls St. Louis Tacoma Tampa Toronto Tucson Virginia Beach/Norfolk Washington DC Washington DC- NoVa Washington DC- Montgomery County

credits:
inc.com
groupon.com

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Looking for new Twitter folks to follow who have a common interest? Want your business to connect with more customers?

There are paid services out there to achieve this, but there are a few free ones, too.

The first is tweepsearch.com, now in beta.

Just enter the keyword or keyword phrase you want to search.

If your search term is more than one word, put it in quotes to get an exact phrase match, like you would do for a Google search. You can also search location by putting “location: (city)” in the search box.

The returning results will show you the matching Twitter members avatars/photos, Twitter name, real name and Twitter bio with your search term highlighted in red.

It will also show you the number of followers, friends and updates each person has. If you wish to see their Twitter pages and perhaps follow them, just click on the hotlinked Twitter names.

You can also sort your returned results by last update, screen name, number of followers and number of friends. Click on the Twitter avatar to limit your search to that persons followers.

Logging in from Twitter allows you to follow and unfollow people directly from the site.

While the site is free, you can opt to pay to have your Twitter profile put at the top of the results for a keyword of your choice for $10 for 30 days, or share with five others for $5.

Another choice: followerwonk.com

Another option is followerwonk.com. This site is also free and shows you Twitter names, real names, number of followers, number of friends and the bios.

In addition, it has a feature that lets you compare two or three Tweeters. It will compare stats such as number of followers, common followers, who they follow, days on Twitter, average new followers per day, number of tweets and average tweets per week.

So feel free to use these tools to build your network and your business.

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Want more customers to find you? Add your free map-based listing at Google Local Listings.

With all of the major search engines now skewing search results toward local, this and other online listings should be part of your small business’s online strategy.

It’s free to publish your listing with all the basic information: Your business name, address, e-mail and phone and location (enter your address; no map skills needed to set this up).

You can also include a 200-character summary of your business and then assign the listing to up to five categories that best describe your business.

You can also customize your listing with photos, videos, payment options, hours, customer reviews and more.

Your review material will be listed as “from the owner.” As your listing is supplemented by user content, including reviews, tips, and photographs, the user content will be labeled as such.

One caveat: with user-generated content, you may receive both positive and negative feedback. Thinking positively, though, negative feedback allows you to improve your business.

credit: inc.com

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