Blogging Fusion

Twitter Offers $100 in Free Ads to Small Businesses

Twitter is ramping up their outreach to small businesses with a special offer for 2011. 

Qualifying small businesses can receive $100 in free ads on Twitter and anyone can download Twitter's recently published "Twitter for Small Business," a handy yet comprehensive guide for small businesses looking to utilize twitter.  

Small businesses must qualify for the free ads of course, though it doesn't look to be too hard.  You can find out more information here. 

Even if you're not interested in advertising on Twitter you should check out the "Twitter for Small Business Guide." Certainly the Twitter team knows plenty about using their platform to market and promote!

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Why You Should Start a Business Today (or Why Occam Was Right)

If you’re into business it’s hard not to get sucked into the macro discussions of what exactly has happened and will happen to the US and global economy.   For someone who wants to start their own business the most direct- and daunting- concern is simply decreased demand.  That particular issue is especially salient because that’s exactly what is so scary about starting a business in the first place, how do you even know anyone even show up?

Well, why not find out right now?

One of the advantages we have at Webmium is a parent company with 16 years of web development experience with companies large and small.  Something we have soundly learned is no matter the project, it's always a challenge to balance the creative vision of the client with their budget and most importantly, their customer’s needs.

Customers generally are just looking for information when they visit a business website and often times extra design, no matter how well intended or executed, just gets in the way.  Occam's razor, ‘the simplest answer (or that that lies on the least assumptions) is probably the correct one,’ truly holds in the space of small business website design.

This isn’t another tale of demanding clients, however, but one of resounding opportunity.  If the most significant economic risk and also most emotionally challenging aspect of starting a small business is measuring the demand for your product or service, the good news is you don’t need to do much more than throw up a basic website to find out.

Direct marketing firms created this tactic a long time ago by sending out test mailers for several different products before deciding what to invest in. You can do the same thing, at much less cost and hassle, by putting together a quick website that summarizes your offer and expertise and doing some pilot marketing campaigns.  After the site is up, you can try Google pay-per-click, make some phone calls and some other basic promotions to see what it is going to take to get your business going. 

This message mission of simplicity is something we stress in our Online Marketing Academy. There we try to provide a detailed roadmap to get this basic, comprehensive online presence going, but ultimately you’ll never really find out until you try.  For all the confusion and uncertainty on the horizon, it’s never been easier to quickly take a business from paper to pavement. 

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Webmium Releases New Social Media Features

We are happy to announce even more social media functionality for Webmium's website creation platform with the release of two additional social media pagelets for our editor. 

Facebook Comments Pagelet

After you add the Facebook Comments pagelet to your Webmium website the following comment box will appear on the page: 

Facebook Likebox Pagelet

After you add the Facebook Likebox pagelet to your Webmium website the following will appear on the page: 

By clicking on "Edit Facebook Likebox" you can edit the URL of the page your visitors will be liking. 

About Webmium
Webmium is a do-it-yourself, what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) website editor and hosting solution for small businesses.  Webmium allows anyone to make a great looking website for free.  

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Webmium Release Several New Features

Webmium has released a few new features this week we are excited to tell you about!

Twitter Feed Pagelet
You can now easily add a twitter feed to your Webmium website with just a click.  In the pagelet menu you can find the twitter pagelet with the following icon:

After you add the pagelet you can edit the user name and number of recent posts listed. 

Just make sure to encourage your website visitors to follow your twitter feed by actively posting interesting news and content to your twitter feed.

Facebook Like Button
Encourage your visitors to ‘like’ pages on your website to to drive even more traffic.  Add a ‘like’ button to each page and when visitors click on it a news item will post on their wall, encouraging their friends to visit your site as well.  You can find the Facebook like button pagelet via the following icon in the pagelet menu.

After adding the pagelet, you can also change the type of like button that appears.

Like Webmium on Facebook to Instantly Submit your Website to the Major Search Engines
We also added a nice little feature to make it easy to start attracting visitors to your new Webmium website, right away. After you publish your Webmium website, the following window will appear:

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Webmium Adds New Feature: Video Pagelet

Webmium has added yet another new feature to our website builder for small businesses: a video pagelet that allows users to easily add Youtube videos to their website. 

Creating an online video is a great way to showcase your products, services, establishment(s), team and more.  The video doesn’t have to be shot with Hollywood worth production values, just professional, personal and to the point.  Webmium recommends keeping videos short, 1-2 minutes or so.

To spruce the videos up, you can use creative commons images in the video for comedic or aesthetic effect.  For a great guide on using creative commons images check out this guide from Ars Technica.

The Video Pagelet is only the latest of many features Webmium will be adding to our website builder in the next few months.  Stay tuned and if you have any suggestions for our next updates please let us know at support@webmium.com. 

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Resource Roundup: Our Favorite Online Resources for Small Business

In this post we will review some of our favorite online resources for small business owners.  Certainly there is no shortage of “top 5 reasons for X” or “how social media can make you rich” blog posts out there, so we’ve tried to choose resources with particularly unique and compelling content. 

Our first example is The New York Times’ Blog You’re The Boss.  This blog is updated every few days with stories from real small business owners and how they are approaching different challenges, especially with regards to online marketing.  The content is nicely mixed between a few businesses that are followed regularly and mini case studies.  The case studies usually focus on an established business trying to expand online and shares input from readers and experts. 

The next resource we recommend is specific to one of the most popular segments for Webmium’s website builder, salon and spa owners. Scissorboy.com hosts a blog and online TV series for spa and salon owners and the online TV series has well over a hundred highly informative episodes. If you own a spa or salon make sure to sign up for the email list so you can receive updates when new videos are posted.  We were particularly impressed with the videos focused on the business side of things which included interviews with specialists and consultants from around the world.  

The last two examples are (mostly) for young companies that are looking to aggressively grow by attracting investment capital.  Passion Capital, a venture capital firm, has a fantastic collection of resources they recommend that range from philosophical to instructional.  For a quick primer on how to create a presentation to attract early stage investment, check out this 22 slide presentation from Ryan Spoon of Polaris Venture Partners. 

How to Create an Early Stage Pitch Deck

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