All posts by Guest

Is Your Small Business Bold Enough To Stand Out?

By | November 9, 2012 | Marketing, Tips | 1 Comment
Is Your Small Business Bold Enough To Stand Out?

This post is by Jeff Esposito, Vistaprint’s Social Media Manager.

Does your business stand out among local competitors?

This is a serious question that may take some time to digest or answer, but we think it is an important one to reflect on. The reason that we ask is that some of the more successful businesses in local markets are also the ones that stand out for some reason or another. While quality, price and customer focus are great, they are not something that always puts a company ahead of the pack. The companies that tend to stand out do something bold that differentiates them from other companies. Read more…

Avoid The Facebook Edgerank Blues

By | November 1, 2012 | Facebook, Marketing, Micro Business Issues, Online Marketing, Small Business Tips, Social Media, Tips | No comments
Avoid The Facebook Edgerank Blues

This post is by Jeff Esposito, Vistaprint’s Social Media Manager.

There is no question that Facebook is important for businesses. It offers an unrivaled platform where companies and customers can interact in real-time while allowing the world to see the conversation. If you manage a page for your business, you have probably noticed that the amount of fans you are reaching with updates has decreased. This drop is due to a change in Facebook’s ranking algorithm, called Edgerank, which is calibrated to optimize the user experience. We agree that this is not ideal for businesses; there are a few things that you can do to help make sure you can boost your presence in your customers’ newsfeeds. Read more…

5 Reasons To Add Photos To Your Marketing Materials

By | October 30, 2012 | Acquiring New Customers, How To, Marketing, Micro Business Tips, Offline Marketing, Retaining Customers, Small Business Tips, Tips | 3 Comments
5 Reasons To Add Photos To Your Marketing Materials

This post is by Jeff Esposito, Vistaprint’s Social Media Manager.

One of the biggest challenges for small business owners is making a personal connection from a piece of marketing collateral. Many times a postcard, flyer or website lacks the personality that would come across in a face-to-face meeting. One way that you can add some more personality and tell your story to prospects better can be through adding pictures to your materials. These photos don’t have to be of you, but could be of things representing your business (so all of you photo-shy readers can breathe a sigh of relief). Below are five tips to help you enhance your marketing materials through photos. Read more…

The Art Of The Testimonial Part Two: Putting Them To Work

By | October 25, 2012 | How To, Micro Business Issues, Micro Business Tips, Offline Marketing, Retaining Customers, Small Business Tips, Tips | No comments
The Art of the Testimonial: Part Two

This blog post was written by Rob Zodda, who works in creative services at Vistaprint and also has digital marketing experience.

Nice work! You’ve spent a lot of time listening to your customers, and gathering their thoughts. Now you have some authentic testimonials from people whose lives were improved by your product or service. That’s great! But what’s next? Here are five simple ways to put those glowing reviews to work for you. Read more…

Top 5 Unexpected Places to Network

By | October 23, 2012 | Micro Business Issues, Micro Business Tips, Offline Marketing, Small Business Tips, Tips | 1 Comment
Networking

This is a post from Sara Nash; Sara earned her degree in Public Relations from Penn State University. From there, she worked a PR agency in Boston before joining the PR and Social Media team at Vistaprint.

Do you ever find yourself walking away from a conversation with a stranger, thinking to yourself how much of a coincidence it was that you ended up having so much in common? If you open yourself up, you are bound to find yourself networking in places you would never expect…which is yet another reason to always carry a business card or 20. Read more…

6 Facebook Page Favorites

By | October 18, 2012 | Micro Business Issues | No comments
Five Facebook Page Favorites

This guest post is by Jeff Esposito, Vistaprint’s Social Media Manager.

We often share examples of Facebook pages that our team finds inspirational. While those examples are great, they are often from companies with giant budgets and don’t reflect the small business owner. So we decided to do a post focusing on great examples of small business owners leveraging Facebook for their business.

For inspiration, we asked the Vistaprint Facebook Community to show us their business’s fan page. We anticipated a number of submissions, but were floored when we saw thousands of submissions! There were a lot of great pages in the group, which made it hard to select the top entrants. Below are the top six pages (we couldn’t settle on the five we promised) that we saw, along with reasons as to why they stood out and some tactics that you can “borrow” from them. Read more…

Finding A Balance When You Work From Home: 3 Tips For The Micro Business Entrepreneur

By | October 17, 2012 | Micro Business Issues | No comments
Finding A Balance When You Work From Home: 3 Tips For The Micro Business Entrepreneur

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity through an online directory between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, leading corporations like Ford Motor Company, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Hershey’s, and Apple Computer made their start as home-based businesses. While it’s encouraging to see the potential success and growth available to home-based entrepreneurs, the truth is that most small business owners are actually not looking for their companies to become multinational corporations. Home-based entrepreneurs tend to intentionally choose both the size and location of their businesses, and the needs of these business owners are specific to their situations. Read more…

How NOT to Start Your Entrepreneurial Day

By | October 15, 2012 | Micro Business Issues, Perspectives, Social Media | No comments
How NOT to Start Your Entrepreneurial Day

Jay Turo is CEO of Growthink, a consulting firm that, since 1999, has helped over 500,000 entrepreneurs and business owners develop business plans, raise funding and grow their businesses.

Probably the worst way for an entrepreneur to begin his or her day is to read the newspaper. Or watch the news. Or, for that matter, surf the net or even check in on the latest and greatest on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. It is not to say that keeping up with events is necessarily a bad thing, and of course for many types of businesses and professions, it is part of the job description to do so. But for the busy and ambitious entrepreneur, doing so first thing in the morning at best is highly distracting, and at worst misdirects one’s mind and energy in the absolute wrong direction. Why? Read more…

6 Tips to Boost The Effectiveness Of Your Facebook Page

By | October 11, 2012 | Digital Marketing, Facebook, Marketing, Micro Business Tips, Online Marketing, Small Business Tips, Social Media, Tips | No comments
6 Tips to Boost The Effectiveness Of Your Facebook Page

This guest post is by Jeff Esposito, Vistaprint’s Social Media Manager.

If Facebook were a color, it would be this season’s black. It has over 900 million users with the oldest Facebook user being 101-years young. This large user base makes it a no-brainer for businesses of all sizes to build up a presence to connect with their customers (if you don’t have a Facebook page yet, don’t worry click here for a quick how to on that). Read more…

Small Business Lessons: Sylvan & Sons

By | September 28, 2012 | Micro Business Insight, Micro Business Issues, Small Business Tips, Tips | No comments

This is a guest post from The Marketplace.

When it comes to being a small business owner, creating a support system is important. One of the best places to look for this network? Other small businesses. Here are a few quotes from Linda Martuch of Sylvan & Sons, a company that produces dog and cat collars, leashes, harnesses and collar bows that we think you might find inspirational.

Her story:
“I got into business because I love dogs and I love animals, and I’ve been doing it ever since. . . for 25 years,” she says. “When I started this, I had never run a business, I had never kept the books, never paid the taxes, never hired employees, never supervised anybody, never been in manufacturing. I was working in computers for a couple years and before that it was real estate and before that I was waiting tables, and I had no business, no training, no experience in business. So basically what happened to me was a 25-year learning curve.” Read more…

Page 1 of 71234567