Craig Allen: Women’s Fest 2014 Offers Attendees Effective Business Solutions

This year’s Women’s Festival 2014 featured many highly experienced speakers offering a broad range of topics, each focusing on solutions to help women business owners build their companies. The theme — “Tech, Talk & Trade” — underscored the growing importance of technology and the Internet for success in today’s highly competitive marketplace.

 

Each year the Women’s Festival, which was held over the weekend at Earl Warren Showgrounds, celebrates accomplishments and nurtures the dreams of women in an interactive, multicultural and multitracked program and expo focusing on the critical areas of women’s lives: personal, professional, philanthropic and planet. The goal of the event, and others like it, is to foster women’s self-empowerment worldwide.

 

The Women’s Festival was a sponsored project of the NAWBO-California Education Fund. The festival included a professional business expo, awards program, and educational and enlightening discussions led by renowned speakers and authors.

 

One of the presenters at this year’s Women’s Fest was Taylor Reaume, founder of the Santa Barbara-based online marketing agency Search Engine Pros. Reaume discussed common pitfalls of website marketing strategies, SEO marketing, social media marketing and email marketing to help attendees develop a winning corporate Internet marketing strategy.

 

Today, any business owner can build a basic website and list it with Google and other web browsers. Some believe this is all there is to building a successful online business.  Unfortunately, for those who stop there, the probability of success is very low. An effective, comprehensive online marketing strategy is an essential element of any successful online business today.

 

Reaume discussed average budgets and online marketing costs associated with growing a business on the web using Google Adwords marketing and SEO campaigns. He also presented web marketing pricing models and answered questions about how to get the best price on web marketing services. Attendees gained a thorough understanding of the importance of search engine optimization and Google search marketing when growing a business online.

 

“I’m happy to be associated with one of the premier events in Santa Barbara for empowering women,” Reaume said. “Today’s women in leadership roles need a solid understanding of how to use the power of search marketing to enhance the visibility and viability of their Santa Barbara companies.

 

“My remarks were intended to provide advice on the best WordPress strategies, email marketing tactics and online marketing plans that attendees can implement themselves to give their business a boost. Attendees who visited our booth received a 30-page website health diagnosis and Google rank report.”

 

Reaume is offering a limited number of these same reports on a first-come, first-served basis. Call him at 1.800.605.4988 for more information.

 

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of formatting a website with specific tactics, keywords, phrases and other techniques to affect the visibility of websites in search engine results. For example, each search engine, such as Google, has a very complex algorithm, or mathematical formula, that is used to rank websites so that when a user types in a search word, Google can decide which websites to list and in what order.

 

The goal of SEO is to have your website appear at or near the top of the list, when a user types in search words that relate to your business. For example, if the business sells bicycles, the owner would want his or her website address to appear at or near the top of the list when a user types in bike, bicycle, Specialized (any brand), etc.

 

As a web marketing strategy, SEO programs consider how search engines work, what the target demographic searches for, and the keywords used in the search process. SEO strategies may include social media marketing, a high-quality SEO news release strategy, or Google AdWords marketing programs.

 

Companies like Search Engine Pros can design and implement customized SEO strategies for any type of business. These strategies can maximize the traffic to the company’s website, and also can help improve click-through rates, meaning the percentage of visitors to the website who click on other pages or links within the site, including purchase links.

 

As Reaume relates, building a successful online business is not just about getting potential customers to your website, it’s about getting them there, and then motivating them to take action to purchase your goods or services once they arrive on your website.

 

By tracking the statistics from the website over time, and various SEO techniques are implemented, SEO experts like Reaume can fine-tune the SEO strategy to improve click-through rates, thereby increasing sales.

 

The best website in the world will not drive business success if no one visits the site. By using an effective SEO strategy in concert with a highly impactful website, business owners can lay the foundation for a successful online business that is sustainable over the long term.

 

This year’s Women’s Festival was a fantastic venue for women business owners, as well as other attendees, to learn about a wide array of effective business enhancing strategies, including SEO. This was a fantastic event that is sure to gain in popularity in the future.

 

Search Engine Pros is located at 201 W. Montecito St. As web marketing professionals, Search Engine Pros offers a wide range of online marketing services, including SEO marketing, email marketing, PPC (Pay Per Click Google Adwords), and SEO web design. Visit the website and Facebook page or call 800.605.4988 to request a complimentary copy of 101 Ways to Drive Traffic.

 

— Craig Allen, CFA, CFP, CIMA, is president of Montecito Private Asset Management LLC and founder of Dump Your Debt. He has been managing assets for foundations, corporations and high-net worth individuals for more than 20 years and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA charter holder), a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and holds the Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA) certification. He blogs at Finance With Craig Allen and can be contacted at craig@craigdallen.com or 805.898.1400. Click here to read previous columnsor follow him on Twitter: @MPAMCraig. The opinions expressed are his own.

Microsoft’s next big headache: The Google Chromebook

Chromebooks, Google’s cheap, modestly powered laptops, make up just a tiny percentage of notebook sales. But Microsoft is freaking out about them.

Late last year, Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) launched a seemingly random, preemptive campaign against Chromebooks in a series of TV commercials. The ads attacked Chromebooks’ lack of functionality and compatibility compared to Windows.

At the time, the ads seemed unnecessary: About 90% of the world’s PCs run Windows. But fast forward six months, and it’s becoming clearer why Microsoft is trying to nip this threat in the bud.

An NPD report indicated that Chromebooks accounted for 21% of commercial U.S. notebook sales last year, though that only included sales in business and education spaces.Lenovo (LNVGF) and HP (HPQ, Fortune 500), two of the biggest PC makers, have added Chromebooks to their laptop lineups over the past year, joining Samsung (SSNLF) and Acer. Google’s (GOOG, Fortune 500) Chrome OS itself continues to grow more and more functional by the day.

And at the beginning of March, Samsung released its 13-inch Chromebook 2, which aspires to be more than just an entry-level, bargain laptop. Equipped with a 1080p high-definition display and Samsung’s top mobile processor, Samsung is confident its Chromebook can go toe-to-toe with a comparable Intel (INTC, Fortune 500)-powered device.

That said, overall market share for Chromebooks is still small. Chromebook sales for 2013 represented somewhere around 1% of total global notebook sales last year, according to Nomura. But they’re obviously catching on in the United States, and some analysts, including Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund, only expect that figure to grow.

Since the PC industry’s growth has gone flatter than a map drawn in the Dark Ages, any faint trace of momentum is promising — or terrifying, if you’re Microsoft.

Samsung says consumers are starting to embrace and understand Chromebooks, which essentially only run the Web. The company says it has noticed a drop-off in retail returns of Chromebooks, which Samsung attributes to Google’s improving Chrome OS software and the Chromebook hardware being more usable for the average person.

But there’s a larger shift at play as well. Smartphones and tablets are becoming more powerful, and the PC is becoming less important for our daily needs. Outside of what we do at work, most of what we actually need a laptop for is what a Chromebook is limited to: Web browsing.

We are fast approaching a reality where the Internet is omnipresent and devices use the cloud — and not USB cables — to talk to one another. Even the few offline tasks — word processing, spreadsheets, and media consumption — can be carried out on a Chromebook nearly as well as on a PC.

Chromebooks haven’t become objectively better than Windows PCs, and they’re not selling by the truckload. But Chromebooks are ready for mainstream adoption. They’re starting to make many of us realize how non-essential a $1000 laptop is becoming. And they can compete with most of the cheaper laptops.

That’s probably what scares Microsoft most.

Source: Money.cnn.com/2014/03/13/technology/google-chromebooks

Using social media to improve your business

You’ve tried to, but so far, your foray into social media marketing is not adding to sales, just to headaches.

How will Twitter sell sweets at your ice cream parlor? How will Facebook fill your restaurant or sell your handmade frocks?

I’ve heard the complaint from small business owners and professionals a million times: “How can I monetize social media?”

Mitch Goldstone has owned a photo-developing shop in Irvine, California, since 1990. He used to develop 24-exposure film cartridges. Today he takes those shoe boxes of photos under your bed and scans them so you can use them online. Scanmyphoto.com has 10,600 followers on Twitter and Goldstone has sent 32,000 tweets.

He doesn’t just self-promote. He shares links and product reviews, and blends into a running conversation online about all things photo. His presence on Twitter and Facebook has taken his Irvine photo shop international. He scans photos from three miles away in Irvine to thousands of miles away in Australia.

“If you’re not into social media social networking you will be out of business. I’m going to repeat that: You will be out of business if you don’t tweet, use Facebook, and social media today,” Goldstone says.

Ido Leffler is the co-founder of natural beauty brand “Yes To…”

When an expensive traditional print marketing campaign fell flat, he and his partner turned to social media to find the face to their product. Their Facebook campaign attracted 150,000 fans and sales doubled in six months.

Social media, in his view, is an equalizer. Anyone can use it, and using it well means new customers.

“Today you don’t have to spend any money at all to set up a Facebook fan page. You don’t need a huge marketing fund to set up a Twitter account. You need zero,” Leffler says.

Here are some dos and don’ts from accomplished users of social media:

‘It just takes too much time and doesn’t add to sales’

Wrong attitude. You can’t afford not to. An online presence is like a phone number: Your customers expect it and are looking for you online.

Listen to your customers

Listen to what your customers are saying about your business through social media. Answer them individually if you can. Word of mouth, good and bad, can have a powerful effect on sales. If it’s bad, ask your customers how you can do better.

Be nimble

In California, a group of hip food vendor trucks tweet their location each day so office workers can pop in.

In New York, a brutal snowstorm last February meant the hit show “Mamma Mia” would be empty on Broadway. The theater tweeted discount tickets for the brave Manhattanites who could walk through the snow, and the house filled.

Watch your competitors

You can get great ideas by watching how others in your industry are using social media.

A ‘tap on the shoulder’

Comedian Hal Sparks, who uses social media to listen to his fans and promote his appearances, suggests thinking of a tweet as “a tap on the shoulder.”

More than self-promotion

Customers respond to well-timed discounts and coupons, but free advice and interesting links also get attention.

Cultivate a consistent online persona

“Social media is a great place to be authentic and let your customers know who you are and tell your story,” says Mike Hofman, deputy editor, Inc. Magazine.

Astringent, corporate sounding prose won’t get you very far. People who respond to social media move fast, are bright and want clever and succinct.

Take it seriously

Designate who in the business will be the online voice and keep it consistent. Some small business owners designate a junior, tech-savvy employee. While that can sometimes work, don’t just designate and forget it.

“That can be a problem because do you really want your intern getting your brand message out there and being sort of the arbiter of who you are in the wider commercial world?” says Inc’s Hofman.

Source: Edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/10/25/money.tips.social.media