As a small business internet marketing consultant, I’m often confronted with some common misconceptions about online marketing. These misconceptions are often based on poor advice from consultants or web designers that my clients have spoken with in the past. Sometimes these misconceptions are a result of a poor experience or a misunderstanding.

Regardless of their source, these myths often keep small business owners from achieving success marketing online. I’m here to set the record straight.

Here are some common misconceptions about marketing and promoting your small business online: (more…)

If you’re someone who always ends up having to shell out extra money for your monthly cell phone bill because 1,000 anytime minutes just isn’t enough, there’s a solution for you (and, don’t worry, it does not involve talking less). VoIP (voice over internet protocol) phone systems no longer only pertains to the world voip business phone systems, and its advantages have now become available for the iPhone. If you’re familiar with VoIP phones, then you already know how cost-effective they can be for those who have to make frequent long-distance phone calls. Such savings can now be applied to cell phone use, and it is estimated by one company that offers VoIP for iPhones that people may be able to save up to 80% by using a VoIP application on their cell phone (Mobile Dev & Design).

The iPhone has taken the capabilities of small business phone systems to a whole new level. Using the technology of a VoIP phone system (using Internet protocol to send and receive calls), users can now place long-distance or even international calls without having to worry about the charges. Internet phone systems, such as VoIP, are a much cheaper alternative to sending calls on your iPhone the traditional way – using your minutes.

VoIP phone system companies now offer applications you can download to your iPhone which will give it the capabilities of ip phone systems. There are many applications available, however, some are more favored over others. Here are our favorites:

Truphone has been given high ratings by such publications as The Times, The New York Times, and Stuff magazine. This application is favored, in particular, because it allows users to search their iPhone’s contact list. In addition, calls are very clear, and can be made and received without delay.

Fring allows you to stay in touch with contacts on multiple networks, such as Skype, AIM, and MSN. iCall can be completely integrated with your iPhone, and works with a Wi-Fi connection. If you are using Wi-Fi and receive a call, you can easily switch over to your iCall application and save your minutes. Papaya and PennyTel are also VoIP applications for your iPhone.

You also have the option of using web-based VoIP applications (which is kind of like using a hosted VoIP system in your office). Instead of downloading the application to your iPhone, you can simply log-in to your account online. JAJAH is one of the top web-applications, and looks like your iPhone’s dialing pad. Talkety, Raketu, and iPhoneGnome are also web-based.

RingFree was one of the first VoIP services for your iPhone, and allows you to make calls using any VoIP service provider you choose. This application also allows you to make calls through an office phone system or virtual pbx.

Now that you can use VoIP technology with your iPhone, ‘unlimited’ minutes has a whole new meaning. VoIP business phone systems have the capabilities to be even more mobile. The iPhone has taken softphone technology to the next level, allowing calls to be placed all over the world without having to pay the high cost. This is great for business travelers who need to be able to stay in-touch with co-workers or loved ones.

Now you have more money for important things, like downloading the latest hit song to be your ringtone.

No simpler words have ever hurt an owner more. Despite all your messaging, marketing, selling, and posturing, you learn it’s all for naught when:

• At a networking event, you overhear a colleague refer an ideal prospect to a competitor of yours. When you ask your colleague why he referred your competitor and not you, he says, “I didn’t know you did that.”
• Worse, even, you learn your customer just suggested his friend call an unqualified competitor instead of automatically pushing the work your way. And, when confronted, your client says, “You do that? I had no idea!”
• Your own employee hears and ignores your client drop multiple buying signals. As gently as you can, you point this out and your employee responds, “Oh that’s right, I guess we do that.”

This is painful for three reasons:

1. Your marketing and sales messaging is ineffective
2. You have no idea how much business you are losing every day
3. Your colleagues, customers and employees feel sheepish for not knowing better

But what can and should you do? Keep refining and simplifying your message. Look at it through the eyes of your colleagues, clients and staff. Have you really made it simple?
Who do you refer and why is it easy to refer those you can? Make it as easy for your supporters as you want them to do unto you. Are you able to refer your closest clients and colleagues to their prospects? Where you have done so, isn’t it because your clients and colleagues:

1. Communicate a clear, current and simple grasp of how their best and highest use is purchased and referred
2. Know how their message is understood and repeated by others
3. Track how and who is referring them and conversely who and how they are referring others

Hearing the damning words, “I didn’t know you do that,” is most painful when your own customers or clients are hiring others to do work you could be doing. Ask yourself, “Do you have a 100% share of your customer’s business?”

If not, then start uncovering and gaining these opportunities so your clients will see, first-hand, what you do!

Andrew J. Birol is the President of Birol Growth Consulting, who helps owners grow their businesses by growing their best and highest use®.

We’ve all heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) by now. These tools help you track the progress of your online campaigns in real-time so you can make tweaks to fully tune your marketing budget and maximize your dollar. Before you start implementing the below efforts, use www.websitegrader.com to analyze your website rankings in comparison to your competitors. After you’ve implemented some of the tools below, you can evaluate and track how much progress you’ve made with your SEO efforts.

The following tools and factors are helpful in determining the relevancy of your website:

SEO tools for your website

• SEO Quake - This toolbar allows you to track key site metrics in your SEO campaign.
• Alexa Rank – This tool measures your overall internet ranking, rankings are in ascending order.
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool – This tool allows you to do some basic keyword research to discover which keywords should be on your site.
• Page Rank Tool - Use this tool to check your Google Page Rank for any given URL.

Other factors to help optimize your website

• Quality Content - one of the most important factors in any SEO campaign is quality content. But, it’s only quality if you use keywords that relate to your site. Keyword density tool checks your content to make sure it flows and is natural.
• Number of indexed pages - The more pages you create with valuable content, the more your site will expand and gain authority. Search engines value high indexed pages with high quality content.
• Meta Tags - These are very important in on-site optimization. Use a meta tag generator to easily create meta tags for your website. Be sure to avoid duplicated meta tags on the website, as you can be penalized by Google.

The Top 10 SEO Websites

Below is a list of valuable SEO resources you should consider when entering the SEO world. Each provides quality tips and tricks that can help you jump start your marketing campaign and maximize your advertising dollar.

10. HighRankings.com - These professional SEO consultants will provide you with search marketing goals, and give you many unique strategies to increase your traffic and rank.

9.) SEOBlackHat.com - A hot SEO blog that provides genuinely useful tips and helpful information, all free of charge.

8.) Seroundtable.com - Provides readers with Search Engine Marketing forum topics from all over the net in one place; a great source for opinions, and advice.

7.) SearchEngineJournal - Another blog that offers SEO tips from a unique perspective, while also providing useful statistics or polls (such as John McCain’s site stats vs. Barack Obama’s).

6.) SEOChat.com - Provides various tutorials and tips to enhance your SEO campaign.

5.) MattCutts.com - Some of the best Google-specific advice you can get, –from a guy who works there!

4.) SubmitExpress.com - Trained professional SEO consultants, prepared to work until you’re fully satisfied with your site’s optimization.

3.) SearchEngineLand.com - More than you ever wanted to know about Google and SEO - a real look behind the scenes!

2.) SEOBook.com - One of most well known SEO resources online. Aaron Hall runs SEO Book which is free, and provides some of the best SEO resources online.

1.) SEOmoz.org - This site has modeled and marketed itself as “The Web’s Best SEO Resources” and they have yet to be proven wrong!

Other tools to improve and benchmark your online efforts

Google AdWords and Yahoo SM advertising are probably the two largest Internet advertising competitors. Both are a pay-per-click advertising service that can help you reach your customers that are searching for your keywords.

Google AdWords works on a bidding scale for placement on the search engine results page for Google. You are charged on a per click basis based on whatever keyword you’re targeting; thus the term “pay-per-click advertising.” Google AdWords has a cloaked bidding system and a higher potential for click through rankings being dropped.

Yahoo Ads are similar except the bidding process is a bit different and not as confidential, which is beneficial when bidding on keywords.

Yahoo is more user-friendly for beginning users with the ability to see all the bidding prices on your keywords.  Google does not provide this bidding information and so you never really know how much you will pay for each bid. You can set a maximum bid which stands as a ceiling for how much you’re willing to pay.  Google AdWords also offers consistent reports that provide user friendly data on your advertising campaign. Google holds the advantage over Yahoo for its competent data distribution, while Yahoo has an advantage for their unique and ultimately helpful bidding system. The coin toss lands in favor of Google however, nine times out of ten, for their rising popularity, despite Yahoo’s higher payout potential.

Submitted by Olivia Goodkin, a partner at Rutter Hobbs & Davidoff in Los Angeles. She is a specialist in labor and employment, business litigation and dispute resolution and intellectual property law.

On June 18, 2008, an important case regarding employees’ privacy in the workplace was decided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The case, Quon v. Arch Wireless Operating Company, looked at whether the Ontario Police Department had violated an employee’s right to privacy when supervisors viewed the contents of his text messages that were transmitted using Department pagers.

According to the court, the Department’s policies regarding the monitoring of e-mail, computer and text messages were overridden once a supervisor told employees their text messages would be audited if they failed to pay for overages on the text-message plan. Because the employee in the case had paid all overages resulting from his use of pager text messages, the review of the employee’s text messages was deemed illegal.

Inside the Case: Looking at the Ontario Police Department’s Policies

The Ontario Police Department issued a pager with text-messaging capabilities to Sergeant Jeff Quon. He acknowledged the Department’s “Computer Usage, Internet and E-Mail” policy, which explained that the City of Ontario had the right to monitor and log all network activity, including e-mail and Internet use.  The policy also stated that users should have no expectation of privacy in their communications when using these forms of communication.

Later, the Department announced at a staff meeting that the policies also applied to using pagers. Under the City’s contract with Arch Wireless Operating Company (“Arch”), the company providing the paging service, each pager was allotted 25,000 characters. The City was required to pay any overage charges.

The Oral “Amendment” to the Written Computer, Internet and E-Mail Policy

Quon’s supervising officer, Lieutenant Duke, told him it was not his intent to audit employees’ text messages for the purpose of seeing whether or not the texts were personal messages. He said he would only conduct an audit if Quon did not pay for the overages. Quon paid the City for overages each time they occurred.

When several officers went over their 25,000 character limit, Lieutenant Duke was ordered to obtain the transcripts to see if the messages were personal or business-related. Arch provided the transcripts, which included personal messages, including several from Quon to his wife.

Quon and others sued Arch for divulging the transcripts of their text messages, and also sued the Ontario Police Department and some of its supervisors.

The Right to Privacy and Fourth Amendment Issues

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the right “of the people” to be secure in their “persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Quon and others involved sued under this Amendment, alleging that a public entity (the Ontario Police Department) obtained the text messaging transcripts improperly.

The court said that Quon’s expectation of privacy “turns on the Department’s policies regarding privacy in his text messages.”  The court pointed out that if the policies of the Department were reflected only in the written Computer, Internet and E-mail policy, with the oral amendment applying to text messages, then the case would end there. Those polices clearly indicated that Quon should have no expectation of privacy in using those resources.

However, once Lieutenant Duke told Quon and the staff that he wouldn’t audit their text messages as long as they paid for any overages, the policies were in effect amended, and created an expectation of privacy.  Since Quon paid for overages as they occurred, it was reasonable for him to expect his messages to remain private.

Because the Quon case involved a Fourth Amendment claim, which applies when there is a “state” or government action, the court decided there was a violation of the Fourth Amendment because the search was unreasonable.

Why the Quon Case Applies to Your Private Company

An employee’s expectation of privacy can apply to any case involving a California employer – whether public or private. The key issue for California employers is that a verbal statement made by a supervisor can override the written policies of a company. In this case, Lieutenant Duke’s assurance that he would not review text messages, except in the limited situations that did not apply to the Quon case, superseded the written policies that specifically restricted employees’ rights of privacy.

What Should Employers Do Now?

Employers must train supervisors regarding policies and procedures. It is not enough to have written policies that define privacy rights. Review written Internet, computer, e-mail, cell phone and other electronic usage policies to see if they reflect company needs. Then, discuss the policies with all company supervisors to ensure that they understand the repercussions of making exceptions to those policies.

Many new small businesses get confused about what marketing steps they need to take first.

I believe that there are 3 essential components that you need in your marketing framework:

1. a website
2. free giveaway and opt-in box
3. marketing tactics based on your core marketing strength

Let’s look at each of these in more depth:

The first component you absolutely need in your marketing framework is a website.  I’m sure you’ve heard this again and again, and are probably sick of hearing about it….but that’s because it is so important!

A website is crucial for building credibility, trust, a relationship with prospects and clients, and also as the key means for building your list.  This leads us into the second component you need in your marketing framework.

The second component is a free giveaway and an opt-in box.  These go hand-in-hand - you need to have an opt-in box on each page of your website that gives people access to a free giveaway in exchange for their name and email address.  This is the way you start capturing names and build a list of prospects that you can communicate with on a regular basis and build a relationship with them.

A free giveaway is a piece of valuable information that your prospective clients would find useful.  There are many different formats you can provide your free giveaway in:  a report, audio lesson, tips & tricks, a checklist, an audio recording and so on.

The third component that you need in your marketing framework is tactics built around your core marketing strength. There are 3 main areas that most marketing tactics fall under:  writing, speaking and networking.

All of us are usually stronger in one of these areas, we enjoy one area more, or it comes easier and we can therefore do it quicker.

Once you figure out that, you will start to add marketing tactics that are built around that core strength of yours, and then grow from there.

So if you’re just starting out or you are not achieving the results that you want, take a look at your marketing framework.  Make sure you have these 3 components working smoothly and rest assured you’ve got a solid marketing base from which to go forward.

Do you naturally gravitate towards marketing tactics that involve writing?  If so, take advantage of this core marketing strength in marketing your small business.

When you enjoy doing something and are good at it, then you can do it quicker, easier and with more enjoyment.  Doesn’t that sound great - especially when it comes to marketing?

Below I’ve outlined the most common (and effective) beginner and advanced marketing strategies that you can use if writing is your core marketing strength.

Beginner marketing tactics for writing include:

• write articles and submit to online submission sites
• write articles and post to your website
• have a blog
• write an ezine
• write press releases and news releases
• create autoresponders and email campaigns

Advanced marketing tactics for writing:

• write articles for industry and association publications (print and online)
• write ebooks
• write a book for publication
• write info products
• do guest blog posts
  • I do Resource Nation
• offer articles to strategic alliance partners and affiliates
• write a column for a newspaper or magazine or an online site
• write a newsletter
• write and send out direct marketing pieces

Have I left anything out?  Please let me know (then I can start using it too!).