They say it takes money to make money. That may be true, but what if there’s no money to begin with? Local business owners all over the country are struggling to secure loans to expand or sustain their businesses. In a flagging economy, some people have gotten creative and used microloans. Microloans are just what they sound like – loans for small amounts of money. Known for its success helping entrepreneurs in third world countries, microlending is gaining traction in the United States, according to a recent article in The New York Times.
Here’s a question. What is the first thing you should online? Is it….
a. Buy pay per click ads b. Build a professionally designed website c. Hang out on social networks d. Get listed in local directories
Once bitten by the online advertising bug, a lot of business owners get ahead of themselves, seduced by pretty flash banner ads and other impressive-sounding tactics. It’s understandable since online advertising tactics tend to be cost-effective and easily tracked, but the reality is that most people should go back to basics first. The single most important thing you can do online as…
Part Three in a series on growing your business through social media tools.
YouTube isn’t just a site to post videos of your pets making silly, human sounds. Many small to mid-size businesses actually use the video friendly site as a marketing tool.
YouTube attracts over 2 billion video views per day and has over 120 million US viewers, which is no small business. Best of all, its free to sign up and easy to use! Here are 6 golden rules to use YouTube to grow your brand:
1. Create Compelling Content: To attract eyeballs…
Part Two of a series on growing your business through social media tools
You’ve heard about Twitter enough to know that it is more than just a fad, but you still don’t really know much about how it can work for you and your local business. Before you do anything, you should know what Twitter is.
What is Twitter? From the description on Twitter.com, Twitter is “a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.” Often referred to as a micro-blog, twitter users post updates that…
For this week’s Yodle Tipster from Local Online Advertising for Dummies, we’re going to be returning to Chapter 3 to talk about that whole series of three letter abbreviations like CPL and CPA that are important to understand in order to measure how your business’s marketing campaigns are performing.
So without further ado, we’re just going to dive right in:
CPM – This often confusing abbreviation stands for Cost per Thousand. That’s right, don’t let that pesky “M” throw you off (because in this case that “M” is actually the Roman numeral for thousand). Cost per Thousand…
