Utah Business

If you are a businessperson, you are always looking for ways you can promote your business, creating a stable clientele and therefore maximizing your profits. Apart from conventional methods of marketing, the internet is today the new and exciting frontier of marketing and networking. Internet marketing is now considered a major means of advertising and promoting your business. The advent of social media websites has been at the forefront of this drive.

Having said that, time management is a key aspect when using social networking websites. You will need to balance the time you spend on promoting your business and actually running the business. The fruits of your effort when implementing may take time to be realised and more so if you have minimal experience. Overall, the effectiveness of these tools depends on your knowledge of how to manipulate and utilise these powerful marketing tools. If done well, the benefits can be gratifying. However, the results of internet marketing can be very fruitful if the proper procedures are used; and among today’s most popular social networking sites, they do not come any bigger than Twitter and Facebook. So let us briefly look at each.

Twitter

Twitter allows you to build a social network of followers: a potential gold mine for businesses. In Twitter terms, followers are the people with whom you share common interests. They are technically your fans. With Twitter, and more so if you have a business-oriented objective, you can also follow other people who you consider potential clients. To attract a large following, you need to first create an attractive profile, which should preferably include your photograph.

Twitter has an advantage over other social websites in the sense that it is flexible and customizable. You may change the appearance of your Twitter page by including links, graphics and even changing the colour theme. It is advisable that you use a colour theme that is similar to your company website’s colour theme. Twitter allows you to change your Twitter Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address and this gives you the chance to include keywords related to your business. Including your company’s biography on your Twitter page may also increase the chances of numerous hits to your website but this largely depends on how you use your keywords. Within no time, major search engines may pick your website or Twitter page, as long as you used your keywords wisely.

Facebook

Having a Facebook page starts with you creating your personal profile. However, you should ensure that you separate your personal Facebook profile and your business page for the purposes of maintaining business integrity and personal privacy. Although Facebook is not as flexible as Twitter, it is still among the most powerful social media websites. It allows you to create a Facebook page for your business. Make your page as attractive as possible and at the same time devoid of unnecessary in-your-face sales-like links. This is because numerous links will give the impression that you are only interested in promoting your business rather than giving valuable information.

So why should business blog? now there is a great question, and if you are a business owner and you haven’t yet considered adding a blog to your internet marketing strategy then you should and fast. Why? what is it about blogging that is so important that I would make a statement like that.

First of all, one of the reasons you should add a blog is it provides a personal form of communication with your audience, or in your case as a business owner, your customer. It allows you to create the “expert” factor in your marketing and you can run it on your web site or alongside on a separate domain name, plus you’ll benefit from the increase in traffic or searches that you’ll receive. If that wasn’t enough to get you running out and starting up a blog, Google and search engines in general love blogs, this is because they provide frequently updated and valuable content, and for that reason they get indexed faster than a standard web site and will, as long as you publish good quality content, end up ranking on the first page of Google.

I wrote my first article on blogging for business and the importance of adding a blog as a corporate communication tool over 12 months ago, and I’m surprised that the penny hasn’t dropped yet with small business owners.

Blogging is an extension of your business web site and allows you to add a personal touch to your web marketing, blogging also allows you a platform to discuss customer service issues or any issue that you believe relevant to your market. If you start to think where your customers get their information from today, you’d realise the value of a number one ranking on search engines.

Think about the Gen X&Y’s, how many of them go to the Yellow Pages to check out business or services? research says none of them do, they “Google” it, so you need to make sure your business web site ranks highly. Blogs allow you to keep the formal and conversational side of your business separate,this is done by running your blog alongside your formal web site. Your blog can be updated daily with information,products or promotions whilst linking to your main web site.

So what are the benefits to a business blog strategy?

Simple low cost PR – Blogs allow to put information on line quickly. Establish your Expertise – Blogs help Position yourself and your company as the experts in your field and can raise your visibility within your target market. Customer service & relationships – Blogs are your human face and your voice to the public. Blogs allow you to join customer discussions, respond to concerns, provide tips and insights  or    receive feedback about your services or products. Build your online community – Blogs allow you to build a community around your business or product as well as providing an outlet for discussions about you and your business Promotional tool – Because blogs can be updated frequently and are indexed very quickly by search engines, you can use them to create promotions around your brand or service and create a buzz for your products. Higher search rankings – Search engines love blogs and your company can benefit from higher search rankings

Blogging is not hard, and it has real benefits for your business once you get your blog established. The most important things to remember with a blog once you start, are be consistent with your posting and provide good quality original content.

Are there any businesses that can’t benefit from a blog? No not to my point of view, so what are you waiting for, get started.

Many of us born before the digital age, often have amassed a large collection of analog media. We may also have older digital technologies that we wish to upgrade to current media standards.

Some advantages of Digitizing your media, include:

*Reduction of Clutter

*Centralization your various media

*Ability to share with friends and family.

*The ability to easily make copies.

Ready to take the digital plunge?

First thing is first, organize your media. Decide what you’d like to digitize. Take inventory and see what you are able to do on your own and what makes sense to send out to a service.

Documents- I am terrible at paper management. In order to stay organized, I scan all my bills, documents, receipts and then discard them. For light scanning, a flat bed scanner will do. For higher quantity scans, I would recommend a Scanner with a sheet feeder. Very Large scan jobs can be farmed out to a professional.

Photos- Been tempted to place your high school photos on Facebook for the 30th reunion? How about digitizing your photos? Small collections can be scanned with a flatbed or sheet feeding scanner. If you have thousands of photos, you may want to utilize the services of scanmyphotos.com for $50 they will scan 1000 of your photos and provide you with a DVD of all your photos.

Negatives and Slides- remember those? For the occasional negative scan, many flatbeds come with a slide adapter. To scan an entire collection, a slide scanner or scanning service may make more sense.

Video- we will discuss a few common video formats. Please be aware if your media is recorded in the PAL or NTSC format to insure you have the correct gear. For more information on the formats, see my article “Top Tech Tips for Olim”

VHS, VHS-C, Hi8 – These formats can easily be converted to DVD with the use of a DVD Recorder. Simply connect RCA, S-VIDEO, or other supported cable from the output of your VCR or CAMCORDER, to the input on your DVD recorder.

If you’d like to manipulate and edit your footage, there are video capture devices and software that allow you to download the footage to your computer where you can make edits and then render the file as a movie to play on your PC or on a DVD.

Digital 8, Mini-DV – These cameras are equipped with FireWire connections which allow you to download your footage to your PC or MAC, once it captured on your computer, the video can be edited and converted to a digital file for your hard drive or “Burned” to a DVD.

Records – Have an old record collection? Are/Were you a DJ with lots of vinyl?

There are specialized USB turntables that allow you to convert your records to MP3 format.

With additional hardware and software, you can mix and manipulate your music. Audacity is a free audio editing program and is a good start.

Cassettes and REEL to Reel recordings With an RCA output from the cassette player connected to the input on your sound card, you can record the cassette to a digital file. With specialized software, you can enhance the sound quality of your recordings. If you don’t have inputs on your sound card, you can pick up a USB adapter.

CD’S- With programs like Itunes or widows media player, it’s easy to copy your audio collection to hard disk, and access them with the computers on your network. You can also make compilation CD’s for the road.

DVDS- With low cost disk space available, it is possible to backup your personal DVD collection to hard disk, where you can view them all in a central location. To backup a DVD to Hard Disk, you will need DVD Ripping software to convert the DVD to a usable format.

Note: In all the above scenarios, we are assuming you are digitizing your own material. Before making copies of any copyright media, familiarize yourself with the laws. In some cases you may be  able to make a backup copy for your own use if you are the rightful owner of the media.

For those looking to digitize your family history, I recommend taking a look at

the book “Digitizing your family history.”

We’ve gone through various media digitization options. Once you have your collection digitized, be aware that digital files do not last forever. It is important to setup a backup and security strategy for your precious data. Please see my article on “securing your data and systems.” I hope this article has been helpful. Share your media conversion tips or experiences on the blog.

Finally, if you need assistance in digitizing or backing up your media feel free to contact us regarding our services.