Small Business Marketing

Aloha, Faithful Readers. You've made it to the Small Business blog category. Below you'll find all the posts from Outspoken that relate to the issues, opportunities and options specifically available to small businesses on the Web. If you're serious about growing your business and acting fast to earn the rankings of someone twice your size, we highly recommend you read each post in this section.  Twice.

Let's be real, not every company has a million dollar budget for SEO or the time to spend "figuring it out". If you're a small business, you need to know how to get the most value for your money so you can concentrate on the areas that will produce the biggest results. We all know that just because your business is small, doesn't mean your dreams are.  You need actionable advice and you need it now.

That's where we come in. Our Small Business category will soon be filled with all the information you need in order to learn how to thrive as small fish in a big pond. We'll show you how to overpower million dollar budgets, how to be quicker, leaner and smarter than the companies twice your size, and why being small often puts you in the better position to win out in the search results.

We're feverishly working to fill our Small Business section with quality content, but while we do that, we invite you to check out some of these trusted resources:

If you're a small business ready to act NOW, give us a call today to discuss which search marketing services plan is best for you.

Why Your Small Business Needs a Website in 2010

December 21, 2009

eMarketer quoted an Ad-ology survey today that found that 46 percent of small business owners do not have a Web site in 2009. A separate Vistaprint study cited by eMarketer found that only half of those with a site are currently tracking their marketing efforts. Maybe that puts my fire about last week’s [...]

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Ignore Robert Scoble, SEO Still Matters For SMBs

December 16, 2009

It’s the end of the year which means, prepare yourself, we’re about to see lots of bold claims and posts written as pure linkbait attention attempts. It’s the Internet. It’s adorable. However, bad information left uncorrected is simply dangerous.
Robert Scoble must be bored because he’s back causing trouble heralding that 2010 may be the year [...]

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How To Use The Holidays To Generate Customer Reviews

December 2, 2009

It’s the most wonderful time of the year (not that one. The one with snow.)! Or it’s at least the most hyped time of the year. It’s when your customers are most primed to open up their wallets and use “the holidays” as their excuse to spend obscene amounts of money. To lend credence [...]

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A Quick & Easy Way To Help Your Site Today

November 23, 2009

It doesn’t matter whether or not people put ads in their Twitter stream (newsflash: they already are). It doesn’t affect your business if Microsoft pays people to de-list themselves in Google. However, it does matter if people can’t find you.  If they’re looking for you and the local search algorithms are placing you on [...]

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How To Build Buzz For Your Small Business Site

October 2, 2009

There’s this really adorable (and totally untrue) idea that if you create a Web site, people will come. That some sort of magic Google Alert will be sent out to your target audience and you’ll get visitors. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way in the same way that starting a blog doesn’t immediately earn [...]

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Why Yelp Is Awesome For Small Businesses

September 3, 2009

You know what’s awesome? Yelp. Yelp’s awesome. Not only did the site help me to not starve to death when I moved to Troy last year (z0mg it’s been a year!), but they’re also doing a great job helping small business owners leverage the power of social media and manage their online reputations. [...]

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Lawn Care Marketing: Five Tips to Increase Your Online Presence

May 8, 2009
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Since our last post showing concrete (and actionable) examples for marketing a catering business online was so well received, I figured we’d do another. This time, I figured we’d offer up some advice to lawn care business owners/landscapers.
Why lawn care marketing? Simple. We don’t have a client in the industry and it was easy to [...]

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Catering Marketing: The Ins, The Outs and How To

April 29, 2009
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So here’s the deal. People argue that the problem with Internet marketing blogs is that they’re all theory and no substance. There’s nothing actionable. Nothing people can run with and use today. Well, we decided to change that and offer up a post that does offer some actionable advice, this time for caterers. Why [...]

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Small Business SEO: How To Launch That Web site

April 15, 2009
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It’s hard when you’re small. Everything seems bigger and more intimidating. Puppies get toppled by bigger dogs,  middle schoolers are stuffed in lockers and small business owners back away in fear of this whole “Internet” thing. But like the chess player who grew up to be accepted by the Homecoming Queen, you, too, can overcome! [...]

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NonProfits and Social Media: It’s the Story, Stupid

March 6, 2009
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Yesterday, Idealist.org and Reddit partnered to announce a brand new project — IdealistNews.com, the new home for social  news related to nonprofits.  If you don’t spend much time dabbling in the nonprofit arena (you’re so going to Hell for that, BTW), Idealist.org has a huge presence in that community. Which means this new site has [...]

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