Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

You see them all the time. Those special ads on television that appeal to your funny bone, connect emotionally, or simply provide a good and solid marketing message that convinces you to go down to your local pizzeria and buy a pepperoni pie.

These ads can have tremendous success for the sponsoring business. Consider the "Old Spice Guy." These clever ads have helped Old Spice become more than just a present for grandpa during the holidays. They have helped create a huge spike in sales for Old Spice body wash with purchases by both men and women (for their men).

Similarly, the E*Trade baby has brought considerable awareness of how simple it is to trade online. Their humorous ads have tickled the funny bone of many would-be self-traders and consequently have helped E*Trade's revenues rise as well.

These ads were imagined by advertising agencies. Your small business may not be in the league where you can afford a Widen and Kennedy like Old Spice, Nike, or Coca-Cola. However, an advertising agency could nonetheless be the right choice to help you boost your sales.

How to Determine if You Need an Agency

An advertising agency does more than just work for you. It is a relationship between your business and creative professionals for a common purpose of developing advertising that will ultimately increase your revenue.

Of course, this requires a bit of money, time, effort, and cooperation. Are you ready for that with your business?

Evaluate current marketing strategies - Take a look at your current marketing strategies. Are they working? Do you find that when analyzing the results, your marketing choices are not as effective as you first imagined? Are your sales stagnant or even dropping? Then it may be time to find an agency that can help you reanalyze and find new ways to reach your target customers.

Budget - Can you afford an ad agency? Of course, many ask, can you afford NOT to hire one? However, you must evaluate how much the agency will cost you as part of your marketing budget. Be prepared to pay much more for this line item than if you were doing your advertising in-house. Also consider what the potential ROI would be in hiring an ad agency.

How You Should Select an Ad Agency

If you have determined that an advertising agency is for you, then you should go on to the next step of selecting a good firm. Not all advertising agencies are the same. Most have a specific focus or niche such as retail, financial services, corporate, small business, etc.

Avoid the temptation to be "razzle-dazzled" by an ad agency's presentation. Remember, they are in the business of persuading and convincing people to buy. You have to keep an open mind as to how effective a specific agency would be for your business, no matter how "spectacular" the presentation is.

Figure a budget that you want to work with for an agency. Don't hesitate to ask for quotes and try to determine a budget that way. Also, ask around. Find out from other business owners who have used ad agencies how much they have paid and whether the cost was worth it.

Qualities of a Good Ad Agency

Check credentials
Does the potential agency have a long history of advertising success? Who are the founders? Is it a newer agency just starting out and struggling to find any customer who will hire them? Who will be in charge of your account? And are they qualified via education and experience to develop marketing that will be right for your business?

Understanding objectives
A good agency will work with you to learn and understand your objectives. After all, the most effective ads come from the base concept of what you are trying to accomplish.

Ask former clients
There is always wisdom to be gleaned from asking for a list of previous clients and asking their opinion.

Where is the agency?
A small local agency may be more effective than a regional or even national one based in another state. Of course, depending on your goals, an agency with national reach could be just the thing you need to broaden your market base.

There are so many things to consider about hiring an ad agency. It's a big decision. Be sure you take the time to make an informed decision and choose an agency that will best help you meet your goals.

Setting up your business blog is an important step in many small business online marketing factors. However, poor blogging habits can have detrimental results. The mistakes you make on your blogging practice could cost you money, your reputation, and even your customers.

The importance of business blogging is outlined in other articles found on this site. Suffice to say, the benefits of proper blogging strategies are worth the effort. And to reap these benefits, you need to avoid the costly mistakes that many small business owners routinely make.

Mistake #1: No Blog Blueprints

In order to avoid making costly mistakes, you need to have a clear objective for your business blog. What do you want your blog to do for your business? Are you looking to gain internet traffic and additional customers through your website? Perhaps you are looking to gain more brand recognition and awareness? Or maybe you are wanting to help increase online sales through your blog posts.

Whatever the case, be sure you outline what objectives and goals you want from your business blog. Without this set of important blueprints, you will likely write unfocused updates and posts, fail to promote each new posting effectively, and ultimately waste your valuable time.

Mistake #2: Failure to Go Behind the Scenes

Your small business should not just be a faceless brand to your customers. Publishing post after post and update after update on your products, industry news, and sales does not allow your online customers to get to know you.

Have you ever watched a "making of" special feature of a movie on DVD? People like to know how movies are made and get some insight into how the story was written, how the actors prepared, and even get anecdotes of the starts while filming was going on.

Use this curiosity in your customers to give them special insight to how your company works. Where do you get your supplies and stock? How long have certain employees worked for you? Where did you get your business idea in the first place? This can be a great way to help your audience know you better.

Mistake #3: Poor Writing

Your blog posts don't have to be exceptional prose in the style of E. Hemingway or as captivating as a best-selling author like John Grisham. However, your blog writing does require certain elements that these great writers possess. Otherwise, you risk losing your audiences' attention or simply driving them away with amateur writing and style.

First, proper grammar and punctuation must be a priority. Nothing screams "amateur" more than a published written work with incorrect punctuation and hard-to-read sentences. If you don't use a professional writer but write the posts yourself, or have an assigned staff member write the updates, be sure each post goes through a comprehensive editing check.

Mistake #4: Missing Other Technology and Media

Your business blog posts do not have to be 500 word essays every time. A blog with just written prose can be difficult to maintain readers' attention and ongoing loyalty.

However, what you do need is a way to shake it up. Keep it fresh. Try posting a podcast once in a while. Youc an even publish regular photos of your workplace and staff. Try creating short videos to upload to your site or to YouTube and embedding into your blog posts. And even if you don't record, edit, and post your own videos, you can always find interesting videos on YouTube that you can share with your blog audience.

Your business blog can work well for your small business and even help you attract more customers. And whether you simply post your blogs on your website, maintain a separate website for your business blog, or make an all-out social media blitz with your blogging, it can serve your business well.

However, you need to formulate the right strategies and goals for your blog, keep your writing clean and interesting, give your audience a behind-the-scenes look, and mix it up with different media for your audience. Avoid the above mistakes, and your business blog will have a better chance to reach your goals.

You've taken our previous recommendations about starting and maintaining a company blog. Congratulations! You're on your way to helping your company website increase readership and search results status.  However, how can you increase the number of views that each and every blog post receives, even after it has been posted for some time?

Simply writing a new blog post on a frequent and regular basis may not be enough to increase total readership.  Here are a few ways you can assure that your blog posts get read again and again, even after posts have been archived.

1. Link to Previous Posts

When you come up with new content, it is likely you will reference a topic that was posted on a previous blog article.  Improve your page views, as well as your SEO efforts, by interlinking your blog posts.  This will encourage readers to click and view an older post, and you get more total views on an old article.

2. Acquire Subscribers

Be sure you publish frequently and regularly. This encourages your readers to join your RSS feed so they are notified each and every time you have another helpful or useful article to read.

3. Assign and Organize Tags and Categories

Be sure you organize your blog posts with keyword tags and categories. Many existing blogging software providers like Wordpress and Blogger allow you to do this. Use only a choice number of categories, but be liberal with your tags. This will help readers get more information on a specific subject that interests them.

4. Encourage Comments

Always encourage comments. This stimulates conversation and debate, and gets readers back again and again to read what else has been posted on a specific subject or blog post.

5. Enable Sharing

Incorporate sharing icons such as Facebook's 'Like' button or a 'Tweet' button from Twitter. Allowing people to share or discuss your blog via social media outlets increases your chances of reaching a larger audience and gaining more readers.

6. Highlight Specific Blog Posts

Sometimes you post a blog article that gets a lot of attention. It is read hundreds of times, and the comments continue to accumulate, even months after it has posted. Be sure you highlight these types of popular blog posts so new readers, and even previous readers, can read the updates. Consider having a "most read" or "most commented" section on your blog main page so your readers can easily link to these popular posts.