Whilst you may not have a £1m budget, a great leveller has entered the scene: the viral video.

While it’s true that not every video will reach the “viral” superstardom of YouTube favorites like Blendtec’s iPhone ”Will it Blend?” clip, which has garnered more than 3 million hits, or the talented Harry Partridge, whose Hal The Misinterpreted Porn Star cartoon has had over 8m views - video can help you market your business in a unique way without spending a lot of money.

As a small business marketing coach, I encourage businesses readily acknowledge that video marketing is something they should be trying out, most are confused on how to begin.

In confusion, people tend to stay still,  are intimidated and have so much on their plate already that they don’t want to risk the time and money spent in an area they don’t understand

Eentrepreneurs need to take advantage of the opportunity video marketing presents.But experts warn that while it is important to add a potentially ‘viral’ element to your clip, the material still needs to be relevant.  So try to avoid something with dancing cats in it, and it has nothing to do with your business.

Here are some expert tips small business owners can use to get started on a video marketing campaign:

Define your audience. Before you pick up a camera and microphone, figure out who you are talking t.

“The clearer you can become about who your target market is and what is important to them, the more your video will stand out because it feels like a personal, one-on-one conversation that was meant for them.”

Think about your formula. Many of the videos that people pass along have a humorous or emotional element. Think about what would make you, as a consumer, want to share a video and start your project from there. From that point ask yourself how you can tie in the product or service and create your story from there. Don’t forget that having a funny element in your video can be tough, and can backfire if not done correctly.

Try being topical –  getting on top of a big news story in a relevant moment is all about ‘trending’ and can help make a video become a hit.

Outline your story. Once you figure out the direction of your video, outline the actual story point. This will ensure the video makes sense and flows properly. It’s also a good idea to get help and input from all levels of your team.

Include a call to action. Your video can be hysterical, touching or inspiring, but if you aren’t asking consumers to actually visit your website or shop at your store, it is pointless from a sales perspective.

“One of the biggest mistakes I see in a video that finally goes viral is that it’s missing the call to action. Although brand identity is important, the most important thing you can do for your marketing is give it a measurable return on investment; the best way to do that is with a clear call to action in the video.

Make it easy for viewers to share and like your video. Make sure your video can be shared in a simple way. Show viewers how can share your material via Facebook, Twitter and more.

Don’t forget to post the video on your own social media pages, website and YouTube.

For most businesses, marketing videos can be made with low-cost equipment like a FlipCam, lapel microphone and free editing software, such as iMovie. You may even be able to use the camera on your cell phone or a simple £10 webcam to record your masterpiece.

There are great success stories where people have elevated their brand’s awareness through having others be willing to pass their video on, but don’t just wake up and think you will make a great viral video that will get millions of hits. Those who have had success have also probably made 74 videos that got zero hits.

Good luck.

Lights, Camera, Action…

Here’s a rundown of what to expect from Gmail’s new features and how business users can benefit from them:

• Streamlined conversations. This will most likely be the first change you’ll notice. Google has redesigned the email “conversation” view in an effort to make reading through email threads easier. Conversations now contain profile pictures for your contacts which, Google says, should make it easier for user to keep track of who said what. This can be useful for business users who often have numerous colleagues or clients communicating on the same email conversation.

Read the story on Entrepreneur.com

• Expanded search. If you click the dropdown in the search box, you’ll see an advanced search panel that allows you to search your emails by sender, recipient, for subject lines and keywords. This can help save time when searching for specific emails.

• Updated navigation. Users can now expand the chatting and label areas. This can be especially helpful for business owners who use Gchat to communicate with employees in satellite offices or use a significant number of labels to help organize their emails.

• New display features. One new feature automatically adapts the window pane to display content in full no matter the size of the window on your computer screen. This can be helpful for busy entrepreneurs who have a million windows open at one time. Another feature allows users to adjust “display density,” meaning you can control the spacing between emails on your screen. This will be beneficial for users who often check business email on mobile devices, which of course have smaller screens.

When you sign into Gmail, you should notice a link in the bottom-right corner of the screen that says “Switch to the new look.” Once you click on that you will be prompted to either switch to the new design or continue using the old version. No matter what you choose now, Google says it will automatically switch all users to the new design “soon.”

Location-based navigation among search engines and mobile device makers is growing quickly. Web search technology companies including FAST Search & Transfer and Google are working with wireless phone companies to power mobile searches from locally targeted results. More wireless devices have GPS functionality which tracks the user’s location. making searches more relevant and Local for the user drawing more regional advertising cash. “Alltheweb” today can tailor results to the searcher’s country. It’s only a matter of time before search results will be narrowed down to city block size or smaller.

Latitude and Longitude coordinates within web sites will soon become an absolute necessity for everyone performing -commerce. This data may relate to the physical location of the web site or where the site is being served from (if applicable) or where the actual business represented by the site is physically located. There may also be multiple web site locations, if for example, you have a franchise with multiple locations each location will probably need a page of it’s own with the correct corresponding locational data.

A web site is a stable animal. It sits on a server somewhere and doesn’t move, so at first glance it may not seem plausible to need GIS Locational Data your site’s source code. On the contrary, one aspect the web site represents, is the business’s physical location(s) and if people are going to try to find services and products based purely upon location, shouldn’t you at the very least, tell them where you are and how to get there?

Here’s an example of how location-based web site marketing may work.

You’re a new city for the first time. Once you get settled into your Hotel room and you pull out your hand-held, wireless device, log onto the web and search for “Italian Restaurants in the city you have found yourself in. (For the sake of explaining this, I am going to assume you can’t be bothered to ask at reception where the nearest and best places are!)” a hundred results come back. So you click the new “location-based” feature on your device which triggers a GPS feed to pinpoint your exact location within the city. Now only 5 Italian Restaurants, relevant to your physical location show up in the search results. Of course this is also dependent on the relevant venue being smart enough to code their web sites with the relevant info

Location-based marketing has many benefits:

• Targeted Marketing – quite literally! The consumer is already in or near your place of business. Remember, this is location-based marketing. A customer is much more likely to come through your door if a competitors store is a15 minute walk away,  yourbusiness happens to be right around the corner from where they are standing.
• Impulse Sales. Real time delivery of advertising prompting benefits of immediate response. ‘Come in within the next 20 minutes and receive 20% off your meal.
• Increased Repeat or additional customer purchases during a visit.

Ggearing your marketing efforts toward this newest wave of e-commerce means preparing well in advance. Implementation of professional search engine optimisation is critical. Not only will your web site need to be properly indexed and found within the general Internet’s top search engines, soon it will also need to be found by physical, geographic, location as well. Specific key words and phrases will need constant editing to reflect the search patterns of mobile consumers in a wireless world. People may not necessarily search by the exact name of the business but rather by general terms, (Italian Restaurant) but you still want them to find you. Success will depend upon the ability to constantly monitor your web site statistics and apply those results back into your marketing.

If you’re not doing this yet, don’t worry too much, just get ready – whilst there is a lot of work for the beomouth-like gods of the wireless world we live in to do, history tells us they get this stuff up and running pretty damn quickly – so start thinking and preparing. That next knock on the door, may just be a new customer.

Have Fun

You start a conversation, find out about each other, find some common ground, you ask questions and you reveal a little about yourself in a polite, engaging manner. I assume you would not propose marriage on a first encounter? So you continue to develop this relationship, build trust and value – you help each other as much as you can – it becomes an equally valuable partnership.

Just because you are an entrepreneur, or work in a start up business, don’t ignore ignore the rules of building and maintaining relationships.

Jan Yager, Ph.D., an author and speaker on this and related subjects, here is a Ten Step guide to help you build better relationships.

1. Create a favorable first impression. You only get one chance for a first impression. Don’t miss an opportunity for face-to-face communication, where you can use body language that welcomes relating, estimated at over 50% of all communication. Limit the use of e-mail and texting for early interactions, where you miss the body language.
2. Avoid negative personality types. By recognizing negative personality types, like the control freak, the blameless type, the idea thief, and the entitled, you will have a better chance of not taking his or her behavior personally. Avoid associating with them.
3. Proactively form relationships with positive types. These are the people who will help you to thrive and prosper. They include real mentors, facilitators, visionaries, motivators, and negotiators. Of course, it still pays to keep your eyes open and carry your own weight.
4. Find a way to motivate others to want to get along with you. Understand your own agenda, and figure out the agenda of others, hidden or obvious, to make it a win-win relationship. How can you appeal to others on an emotional level to work together?
5. Reexamine your attitude toward conflict. Some conflict is inevitable. The key is how to deal effectively with it. Recognize points of view, respond to what happened, resolve what needs to be resolved, and reflect on the lessons learned. Then move on.
6. Deal with the “back-off” before it turns antagonistic. Rather than have a confrontation, someone backs off. You can’t make someone want to deal with you, but you can try to increase their motivation to deal with you – like getting together for lunch, or trying to communicate in another way.
7. Benefit from harsh feedback about your work. Receiving criticism is never easy. Try some recovery techniques, like taking a deep breath, give yourself time, and look at the issue from their perspective. Keep your initial response short and sweet and in control.
8. Cope with the “lonely at the top” syndrome. One of the prices that you pay for being a CEO is giving up a lot of the social relationships within the company. There is a line beyond which you cannot go. You cannot compromise what is right for the company just to be liked. Join associations, or rely on your family for support and feedback.
9. Say goodbye, if leaving is the best option. Sometimes it’s better to just move on, rather than endure extended pain. Even if you cannot quit this instant, you can at least start looking for a new job. Be proactive in planning for your next position.
10. Use social networking to improve your work relationships. Savvy workers at all levels are using these sites to develop and strengthen their business relationships as well as to reconnect with previous business connections. Make your own luck by giving and seeking referrals.

The decisions we make in business today are more vital than ever before – to make this decisions, we need feedback from customers, staff, colleagues and any other relevant group. So how do we get the answers, so we can base our decisions on. Well, we could make up all the answers to suit us or our situation. or, we could just ask the question.

With great FREE online services such as SurveyMonkey – we can now ask relevant questions about what we done, are doing or are about to do. With a big enough sample of responses, we can anaylise the results and make well informed choice and decisions.

I wanted to know more about people’s opinions of Social Media – so I asked them – if you haven’t seen it – it’s here – let me know what you think.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LRBQWHX

You’ll soon get the idea. Once you have that, you can soon start getting the answers to your questions.

Good luck

Rob

Winston Churchill woke early but worked from bed until late morning.
He then rose for a brisk walk and a weak whisky and soda. By early
evening he was ready for his siesta, a habit he claimed allowed him to fit
one and a half days worth of work into every 24 hours. Charles Darwin,
another early riser, worked for most of the morning in his study, but
invariably considered 12 noon to be the end of his working day.
For some individuals there seems to be a link between routine and
success. So, can a ritualistic approach to managing time help to get the
most from your days?
You may think not. Some people are immediately sceptical about the
regimented nature of routine, preferring a more flexible approach. But
routines can be rigid or flexible, and making even the smallest changes
to your days can help to increase productivity, satisfaction and success.
“It’s quite a personal matter”, says writer Simone de Beauvoir. There are
no rules; one person’s routine could be entirely incompatible with the
next person. For this reason it’s important to undertake some honest
self-analysis.
When are you most productive, attentive or creative: mornings,
afternoons or evenings? When do you best work alone, and when do you
prefer the company of others? Do you attend to detail best with a fresh
morning head, or in the evening when there’s fewer distractions? Asking
such questions enables you to match specific tasks with specific time
slots that suit your behaviours best. For example, if you’re most
productive but most antisocial in the mornings, make your routine
simple: mornings – personal tasks; afternoons – meetings and team
working.

OK, so you never stop learning – but if you have ever used Word to create a document with a picture in it, then basically, you can build a web site. It’s not difficult and you’re not going to break the internet by giving it a go.

Whether you choose to build a custom site from scratch, or use any of the millions of free templates out there – the choice is yours – but develop these skills and you can soon be making web sites for you , your friends and family.

Exploring WordPress is a great place to start, personally I would avoid using the on-line systems that ‘help’ you build your own site in minutes – these will cost you dearly in the long run and you’ll learn very little.

A great place to start is Learnign Web Design. Either hard copy or e-book – these Head First series are very well written and produced to make the subject not only easy to learn, but to retain the knowledge, through series of well thought out exercises.

Everything you need to know to create professional web sites is right here. Learning Web Design starts from the beginning — defining how the Web and web pages work — and builds from there. By the end of the book, you’ll have the skills to create multi-column CSS layouts with optimized graphic files, and you’ll know how to get your pages up on the Web.

This thoroughly revised edition teaches you how to build web sites according to modern design practices and professional standards. Learning Web Design explains:

• How to create a simple (X)HTML page, how to add links and images
• Everything you need to know about web standards — (X)HTML, DTDs, and more
• Cascading Style Sheets — formatting text, colors and backgrounds, using the box model, page layout, and more
• All about web graphics, and how to make them lean and mean through optimization
• The site development process, from start to finish
• Getting your pages on the Web — hosting, domain names, and FTP

The book includes exercises to help you to learn various techniques, and short quizzes to make sure you’re up to speed with key concepts. If you’re interested in web design, Learning Web Design is the place to start.

Using Discount or Loyalty cards in your business works in 2 ways. 

1. They can drive new customers to your business

2. They can help retain the loyalty of all your customers

Defining Loyalty Cards

• Take a look in your wallet and you probably have at least two or three loyalty cards for grocery stores, pet stores or other retail outlets. All types of companies are moving to loyalty cards to get consumers to shop with them more than their competitors. Most loyalty cards offer rewards when you, the consumer, either swipe the card or simply get it stamped at the checkout. We all love the benefits, but there are those who feel that the information collected by loyalty cards could be an invasion of privacy.

Your own system?

• It makes a lot of sense for businesses and retailers to operate their own system, customers prefer that.
  A lot of loyalty systems are operated by an outsourced contractor and increasingly more shoppers are becoming aware that their data is getting sold on. To set up your own system can be as simple as you want. Some printed cards and a unique rubber stamp and voila! your cafe, shop has it’s own system. Or, you can get a great looking, longer lasting plastic card with magnetic swipe or barcodes that can work with your existing Point of Sale technology.

Rewards

• The biggest reward is often the discounts advertised at the retail outlet. These sale items are usually only offered to loyalty card customers, so if you want to get that summer picnic set on sale, you had better have one. Customers can also be sent targeted notices of specials based on their shopping trends.

Find out today just how you can get your plastic card system up and running – speak to Chris Wilson at Plascards.co.uk – just click the link below