A BlackBerry Acquisition, Online Fakes and More

If you’ve missed some of the top news stories important to small business owners and entrepreneurs this week, don’t worry. Running a business is a full-time job. We understand. That’s where the Small Business Trends editorial team comes in. We collect the news most important to you all in one place so you won’t miss a thing.

Let’s get started.

Mobile News

BlackBerry acquisition worth $4.7 billion. Stock holders won’t be happy if it happens, but for small business owners things might not be bad. If the company goes private, it might mean more focus on business solutions.

Microsoft Surface 2 tablets unveiled. After considerable buzz, Microsoft’s second generation of Surface tablets were announced this week. One aspect potential buyers â€" including small businesses owners â€" may have trouble with is the cost.

McDonald’s offers mobile payments. The fast food chain is testing the service currently in select cities. Is your small business offering a mobile payment option? Here’s where the trends are headed.

Nokia to unveil largest Windows phablet. If photos bouncing around the Internet are to be believed, the new Nokia 1520 will have a 6-inch full 1080 p HD display. We’ll see how this one stacks up to the competition.

New NVIDIA tablet will cost only $119. The Tegra Note may not be perfect, but it has some features that might be appealing to small business owners. And one of the biggest selling points may be the price.

Counterfeits, Online Fakes and Resellers

Alibaba takes on counterfeiting. The Chinese website that has become a wholesale marketplace and ecommerce powerhouse is finally working to address counterfeiting among some sellers. What steps can you take to make sure you aren’t a victim?

Fake reviews fetch $350,000 in fines. If you’ve ever been tempted to write one of those fake reviews praising your own business on Yelp or elsewhere, don’t do it. This post will show you what can happen.

Etsy struggles with reseller issue. The site was founded for artisans and craftspeople creating one-of-a-kind handmade products. For many of these small business people, reselling of mass produced items on the site is a major blow.

Products & Services

Windows 8.1 available. Business owners and other users who don’t yet have Windows 8, will have to pay for the upgrade to Windows 8.1. But it’s still available, if you want it. To get Windows 8.1 for your Windows 7 or other device, here are the costs and other specifics.

Pay whatever you want for CRM. Anita Campbell, CEO and founder of Small Business Trends, gives us a look at this new product for keeping track of your contacts. It’s Zoho’s new ContactManager, and the cost for small businesses interested in getting started may surprise you.

American Express promotes tech investment. American Express says data shows small businesses are ready to invest in tech. A new offer for Business Gold Card holders gives incentives to do just that. What do you think?

Health Care

Small business health insurance keeps rising. In fact, last year it rose faster than inflation, according to the 2013 Kaiser Family Foundation Health Benefits Survey. Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University Scott Shane has more.

More delays with Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, delays continue with the U.S. Affordable Care Act. For small businesses who want to sign up to provide coverage for your employees, you’ll have to wait another month to do so online. Read more of the ongoing saga.

Other News

NASE has new leadership. The National Association of the Self-Employed is the voice for America’s 23 million self-employed and micro-business owners. Meet the organization’s new president and CEO.

Reading Photo via Shutterstock

8 Tools That Will Help Monitor Your Google Rank

Name one tool that you use to monitor your Google rank to make sure that your website is not being penalized.

The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

1. Raven Tools

Raven is an all-in-one Internet marketing platform for SEO, social media, PPC and content. Research, manage, monitor and report on every aspect of your campaign.
- Hassan Bawab, Magic Logix

2. SEOmoz

We like to use SEOmoz. Candidly, we are a lot less focused on SEO than creating great content. If you’re an industry expert and you write great content that people share, it’s a lot more powerful than riddling your site with keywords. SEO has lost a lot of its allure with Google penalizing sites, and it further affirms that quality content is the only way to stay ahead of the game.
- Sarah Ware, Markerly

3. SERPs.com

I monitor Google keyword rankings using SERPs.com, and sometimes I use the Page Rank Checkerplugin for Firefox.
- Joe Apfelbaum, Ajax Union

4. Moz

Moz allows you to create campaigns that can track up to 300 keywords. Moz will report the percentage change for that keyword week over week, so you can see if any efforts are resulting in successes or penalties. You’ll see how many of your keywords are ranking in the top three, first page and whether they’re in the top 50 results for your selected search engines. Moz is the best tool to monitor your rank.
- Brett Farmiloe, Digital Marketing Agency

5. PageRank Checker

PageRank Checker is incredibly basic, but it provides the most comprehensive number: PageRank. You can use this tool to understand the relative strength of your page â€" or any external site with which you’re considering partnering.
- Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches

6. SEMrush

SEMrush monitors ranking changes across the top 95 million organic keywords in Google and Bing. If you sign up for a pro account for $70 per month, you can run campaigns on up to 500 keywords at a time to monitor your rank. It’s slightly cheaper than Moz, which is $100 per month, but with most products, you typically get what you pay for, so I’d suggest trying both. Then, decide for yourself which suits your needs best.
- Matt Ehrlichman, Porch

7. Google Webmaster Tools

These days, Google is completely transparent with the data they are accessing and subsequently penalizing. They use their Webmaster Tools platform to communicate such events with website owners. A good marketer and/or webmaster always stays on top of his crawl stats and site info within the Webmaster Tools dashboard.
- Logan Lenz, Endagon

8. CuteRank

I use CuteRank to monitor my results. It has not hurt our website from being penalized because the software doesn’t tell Google what website domain it’s searching. The software allows you to see a history and track if the website improved or not. The best part is the cost. It doesn’t require a monthly payment like other keyword tracking tools.
- Derek Capo, Next Step China

Online Signup for Small Biz SHOP Exchanges Under Obamacare Delayed A Month

Online signup for small business health insurance coverage under the U.S. Affordable Care Act has been delayed by one month.  However, paper applications mailed or faxed in, or phone sign-up, will be available by the October 1st deadline, reports the Washington Post.

The Small Business Health Option Program (SHOP), through which small businesses with 50 or fewer employees can sign up to provide healthcare coverage options for employees, is expected to open up for enrollment October 1, 2013.

The official announcement from the U.S. Department of Health is confusing at best.  Government officials have objected to the characterization of the later signup date as a “delay.”

One way to look at this online signup date change is that by itself it’s not a huge matter.  But some observers say the various sliding dates, even a one-month delay such as this, are a signal that the Affordable Care Act is just not ready for prime time.

“Every step in the implementation process has seen delays and setbacks; we are certainly not surprised by this one. But with this latest glitch in the small-business exchanges, the case for a delay of the individual mandate alongside the employer mandate only grows stronger,” said Kevin Kuhlman. Kuhlman is the manager of legislative affairs for the National Federation of Independent Business.

“Small-business owners should not be forced to comply with a law that is clearly not ready for prime-time. This is starting to seem like a parody; unfortunately, it is extremely serious,” Kuhlman added.

Individuals still will be required to buy health insurance by Jan. 1, 2014 or face fines.

Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees may be able to receive tax credits for providing healthcare that can help cover premiums.

Read more information about SHOP exchanges affecting small businesses with 50 or fewer employees - and those who work for them.

Sponsored Content

8 Tools That Will Help Monitor Your Google Rank

Name one tool that you use to monitor your Google rank to make sure that your website is not being penalized.

The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

1. Raven Tools

Raven is an all-in-one Internet marketing platform for SEO, social media, PPC and content. Research, manage, monitor and report on every aspect of your campaign.
- Hassan Bawab, Magic Logix

2. SEOmoz

We like to use SEOmoz. Candidly, we are a lot less focused on SEO than creating great content. If you’re an industry expert and you write great content that people share, it’s a lot more powerful than riddling your site with keywords. SEO has lost a lot of its allure with Google penalizing sites, and it further affirms that quality content is the only way to stay ahead of the game.
- Sarah Ware, Markerly

3. SERPs.com

I monitor Google keyword rankings using SERPs.com, and sometimes I use the Page Rank Checkerplugin for Firefox.
- Joe Apfelbaum, Ajax Union

4. Moz

Moz allows you to create campaigns that can track up to 300 keywords. Moz will report the percentage change for that keyword week over week, so you can see if any efforts are resulting in successes or penalties. You’ll see how many of your keywords are ranking in the top three, first page and whether they’re in the top 50 results for your selected search engines. Moz is the best tool to monitor your rank.
- Brett Farmiloe, Digital Marketing Agency

5. PageRank Checker

PageRank Checker is incredibly basic, but it provides the most comprehensive number: PageRank. You can use this tool to understand the relative strength of your page â€" or any external site with which you’re considering partnering.
- Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches

6. SEMrush

SEMrush monitors ranking changes across the top 95 million organic keywords in Google and Bing. If you sign up for a pro account for $70 per month, you can run campaigns on up to 500 keywords at a time to monitor your rank. It’s slightly cheaper than Moz, which is $100 per month, but with most products, you typically get what you pay for, so I’d suggest trying both. Then, decide for yourself which suits your needs best.
- Matt Ehrlichman, Porch

7. Google Webmaster Tools

These days, Google is completely transparent with the data they are accessing and subsequently penalizing. They use their Webmaster Tools platform to communicate such events with website owners. A good marketer and/or webmaster always stays on top of his crawl stats and site info within the Webmaster Tools dashboard.
- Logan Lenz, Endagon

8. CuteRank

I use CuteRank to monitor my results. It has not hurt our website from being penalized because the software doesn’t tell Google what website domain it’s searching. The software allows you to see a history and track if the website improved or not. The best part is the cost. It doesn’t require a monthly payment like other keyword tracking tools.
- Derek Capo, Next Step China

6 Inspiring Business Lessons I Learned From Carly Strife and Seth Godin at ‘Small Biz, Big Things’

Last week, I joined some 250 entrepreneurs and small business owners at “Small Biz, Big Things” for a wonderful evening of learning and sharing with Barkbox co-founder Carly Strife and author/speaker Seth Godin. SmallBizTechnology’s own Ramon Ray kicked off the event, which was sponsored by Infusionsoft, by firing up the crowd. He assured usthat we all share many of the same struggles, oscillating somewhere between barely surviving and thriving as a small business. He promised that the evening would yield answers to some of our most pressing questions about small business success, and it did!

Carly Strife, co-founder of Barkbox, spoke first, sharing with us the journey that brought her to her current position. Her career started at consultancy Deloitte where, despite being successful, the work simply was not personally rewarding. She surrounded herself with people whose passion she admired and those that shared a common vision for success. This landed her an opportunity at the start-up Uber, where she helped them become the market-dominating transportation app.

Although this was exactly the type of job she thought she had wanted, Ms. Strife made a very significant realization: “I simply wasn’t passionate about the taxi and transportation industry and this limited what I could contribute.” Armed with this self-awareness, she co-founded a new company, one that focused on her true love: her dogs. Since that day, New York-based Barkbox has become a phenomenal success, slated to achieve $25 million in revenue in its third year, and spinning off a number of equally successful companion companies.

The three main lessons I took away from Ms. Strife were:

• If you want to do something, go do it. Despite being successful in two significant roles prior to founding Barkbox, Ms. Strife realized that something was missing and only she had the power to pursue it. Working on something that doesn’t fulfill you ultimately undermines your job satisfaction and limits your professional success. It’s scary to make a dramatic change, but the alternative should be scarier.
• Pursue your passion. In addition to providing greater personal satisfaction by doing something enjoyable, a company (or individual) that is able to focus on a single passion-driven cause can operate with “laser like focus.” When you have such clarity of purpose things are either aligned or they are not. This avoids much ambiguity and costly distractions.
• Don’t be afraid to try lots of things along the way. While currently analytics and ROI analysis of marketing campaigns play a much bigger role than in the start up days of Barkbox, things were not always so. Ms. Strife encourages entrepreneurs to try many different marketing approaches, not being afraid to see what sticks. If you dismiss too many ideas because they might not work, you will miss some surprising successes.

Celebrated author and speaker, Seth Godin, was up next. His broad business acumen spans permission marketing, sales, branding, customer acquisition and retention to name a few. Mr. Godin has an immense talent for cutting through the clutter and identifying common sense wisdom that most of us miss because we’re too “down in the weeds” of running a business.

I learned enough to fill several pages during this great evening, but my key takeaways from Mr. Godin were:

• ”If you are selling to everyone, you are selling to no one.” In an economy that has replaced retail shelf scarcity with nearly limitless choice, it is important to properly identify your ideal customer and find more with similar traits. He suggests you sell to the “weird,” those on the fringe, as they are more likely to have problems to solve and to want to belong to a community of like-minded customers of a common brand. There’s also nothing wrong with not trying to sell everything and instead curating “only the best” (as defined by your unique customers’ needs).
• ”The world’s job is not to hear the story you want to tell, but for you to tell the story the world is ready to hear.” Many entrepreneurs are convinced they have a good or service that will sell and end up disappointed. This often results from companies offering a square peg solution for a customer’s round hole problem. The best companies figure out what story their ideal customers are telling themselves about why they are customers, ensuring the company’s story (or offering) is perfectly in sync.
• “Targeted spam is still spam.” If you’re spending time and money running marketing efforts that aren’t targeted, you are interrupting your audience. Response rates are typically very low and only huge brands with broad recognition and ability to achieve significant share of voice should attempt interrupt marketing. The rest should focus on permission-based and discovery marketing, providing a suitable offering to those already looking for one.

 

Mr. Godin left us with perhaps the most important insight of his career: almost all of his key successes were a direct result of, or followed some of his biggest failures and setbacks, reminding us that it’s okay to fail as long as we keep trying and learn from our mistakes. 

If you’d like to see more attendee comments from the event, you can check out the twitter feed  by searching for  #smallbizbigthings. 

6 Inspiring Business Lessons I Learned From Carly Strife and Seth Godin at ‘Small Biz, Big Things’

Last week, I joined some 250 entrepreneurs and small business owners at “Small Biz, Big Things” for a wonderful evening of learning and sharing with Barkbox co-founder Carly Strife and author/speaker Seth Godin. SmallBizTechnology’s own Ramon Ray kicked off the event, which was sponsored by Infusionsoft, by firing up the crowd. He assured usthat we all share many of the same struggles, oscillating somewhere between barely surviving and thriving as a small business. He promised that the evening would yield answers to some of our most pressing questions about small business success, and it did!

Carly Strife, co-founder of Barkbox, spoke first, sharing with us the journey that brought her to her current position. Her career started at consultancy Deloitte where, despite being successful, the work simply was not personally rewarding. She surrounded herself with people whose passion she admired and those that shared a common vision for success. This landed her an opportunity at the start-up Uber, where she helped them become the market-dominating transportation app.

Although this was exactly the type of job she thought she had wanted, Ms. Strife made a very significant realization: “I simply wasn’t passionate about the taxi and transportation industry and this limited what I could contribute.” Armed with this self-awareness, she co-founded a new company, one that focused on her true love: her dogs. Since that day, New York-based Barkbox has become a phenomenal success, slated to achieve $25 million in revenue in its third year, and spinning off a number of equally successful companion companies.

The three main lessons I took away from Ms. Strife were:

• If you want to do something, go do it. Despite being successful in two significant roles prior to founding Barkbox, Ms. Strife realized that something was missing and only she had the power to pursue it. Working on something that doesn’t fulfill you ultimately undermines your job satisfaction and limits your professional success. It’s scary to make a dramatic change, but the alternative should be scarier.
• Pursue your passion. In addition to providing greater personal satisfaction by doing something enjoyable, a company (or individual) that is able to focus on a single passion-driven cause can operate with “laser like focus.” When you have such clarity of purpose things are either aligned or they are not. This avoids much ambiguity and costly distractions.
• Don’t be afraid to try lots of things along the way. While currently analytics and ROI analysis of marketing campaigns play a much bigger role than in the start up days of Barkbox, things were not always so. Ms. Strife encourages entrepreneurs to try many different marketing approaches, not being afraid to see what sticks. If you dismiss too many ideas because they might not work, you will miss some surprising successes.

Celebrated author and speaker, Seth Godin, was up next. His broad business acumen spans permission marketing, sales, branding, customer acquisition and retention to name a few. Mr. Godin has an immense talent for cutting through the clutter and identifying common sense wisdom that most of us miss because we’re too “down in the weeds” of running a business.

I learned enough to fill several pages during this great evening, but my key takeaways from Mr. Godin were:

• ”If you are selling to everyone, you are selling to no one.” In an economy that has replaced retail shelf scarcity with nearly limitless choice, it is important to properly identify your ideal customer and find more with similar traits. He suggests you sell to the “weird,” those on the fringe, as they are more likely to have problems to solve and to want to belong to a community of like-minded customers of a common brand. There’s also nothing wrong with not trying to sell everything and instead curating “only the best” (as defined by your unique customers’ needs).
• ”The world’s job is not to hear the story you want to tell, but for you to tell the story the world is ready to hear.” Many entrepreneurs are convinced they have a good or service that will sell and end up disappointed. This often results from companies offering a square peg solution for a customer’s round hole problem. The best companies figure out what story their ideal customers are telling themselves about why they are customers, ensuring the company’s story (or offering) is perfectly in sync.
• “Targeted spam is still spam.” If you’re spending time and money running marketing efforts that aren’t targeted, you are interrupting your audience. Response rates are typically very low and only huge brands with broad recognition and ability to achieve significant share of voice should attempt interrupt marketing. The rest should focus on permission-based and discovery marketing, providing a suitable offering to those already looking for one.

 

Mr. Godin left us with perhaps the most important insight of his career: almost all of his key successes were a direct result of, or followed some of his biggest failures and setbacks, reminding us that it’s okay to fail as long as we keep trying and learn from our mistakes. 

If you’d like to see more attendee comments from the event, you can check out the twitter feed  by searching for  #smallbizbigthings. 

How to Use The Linkedin Mentions Feature to Engage and Connect

As most people know, unless you participate in social networks, you won’t get much out of them. The same is true with LinkedIn. One way to engage with others is by posting several Status Updates a day. But sometimes it’s hard to create strong Status Updates.

The good news?

A feature that LinkedIn began rolling out in April, 2013, is extremely helpful in creating powerful LinkedIn status updates.

Still not widely used at this point, it’s the LinkedIn Mentions or “@mentions” option. It allows you to “call out” someone, similar to Twitter or Facebook. They get notified that you’ve mentioned them.

Note:  This feature is only available, at this time, for personal LinkedIn status updates. As of this writing, it is not yet available for company page status updates or group discussions.

Use LinkedIn Mentions When Writing a Status Update

1. Go to the home page of LinkedIn. Make sure you are logged in.  You will see your status updates there. When you want to mention a LinkedIn connection or company, begin by using the “@” sign and then typing the name of a company or connection in the status update box.  Example: @BizSugar.

3. The mentioned connection or company will receive an instant notification informing them they have been mentioned on LinkedIn.

See the image below indicating how simple it is to use LinkedIn @Mentions.

Ways to Use the LinkedIn Mentions Feature

Recommendations

Recommend a product or service, or both, and include the @mention of the person who created it or is selling it.

Thanking Others

Thank someone for sharing useful information. Instead of just sharing great content, include a comment that mentions a person or company.

Congratulating Others

Congratulate a person or business for winning an award or accomplishing an achievement or special milestone of some sort.

Why Using the @Mentions Feature is So Important

As Dale Carnegie said:

Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

Benefits of Including a Connection or Company Name

Immediate Notification

The person or company you mention is immediately notified of the mention, so you get on their radar screen in a positive way.

Reciprocation

This encourages the mentioned person or company to reciprocate in some way, as people naturally feel compelled to “return the favor.” This could be by posting something nice about you, sending you a referral, giving you business, etc.

A Positive Impression

By saying something nice about someone else, you look great to others.

Word-of-Mouth

You are providing excellent word-of-mouth for the mentioned product, service, person or organization, which in turn helps them get more connections and business.

Start creating more powerful LinkedIn Status updates by using the “@mentions” option today. You’ll develop stronger connections and create more business opportunities.

Sponsored Content

3 Tips To Using #Hashtags Effectively Without Going Overboard

As I was perusing my personal Facebook page this morning, I came across a post by a friend of a funny Youtube video by Jimmy Falon and Justin Timberlake called “#Hashtag”. Since I’m always up for a good laugh, and it’s related to a new technology / marketing phenomenon, I couldn’t resist and had to see what it was all about. After all, #hastags are everywhere now: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram - every time you turn around there is a #hashtag in your face. This video skit shares a funny look at how people are overusing the #hashtag. Take a peek at the video below, or by clicking here.

So, while the video is funny to watch, it does raise a very important point - people are overusing the #hashtag! Not only does this overuse  lead to annoying your followers, it also makes the hashtag completely ineffective.

We’ve written a number of articles here on Smallbiztechnology that discuss why you should use hashtags and the payoff you can receive by using them on social media platforms like Facebook. But what we obviously now need to discuss is how to properly and effectively use hashtags so they get you the marketing and engagement results you are looking for. Here are three tips you can follow to do that:

• Choose Your #Hashtags Carefully: The point of using a hashtag is to be found among the sea of social media postings, so the words you choose to hashtag have to be relevant to the conversations you are trying to take part in. For instance, if you want to be found by people looking for business information, include #business in your posting. I did a quick search on Facebook for “#business” and the image below shows the results. See how relevant that is to what the post is trying to achieve?

• Don’t Overuse The #Hashtag: Well…the video clearly demonstrates this point, doesn’t it?! Using too many hashtags will only confuse the conversation and it often makes the posting look like spam. A simple rule to follow is only using one or two hashtags in a post and making sure they hit on the most relevant topics of that posting. (see examples in image above). Another thing to remember is that just because the hashtag exists, you don’t always have to use it. Hashtags only work when they are relevant and take you someplace meaningful. Remember that!
• Put Your #Hashtag to the Test: Creating an effective hashtag isn’t about throwing a # sign in front of a word. It has to be something that is relevant and in use. If you aren’t sure if your hashtag is relevant, then test it. You can easily type it into the search bar in Facebook or Twitter and see what results are returned. You can also use sites such as Hashtags.org to see what’s trending now and choose relevant hashtags from there. Trending tags (assuming they are relevant) will further help you reach your target audience.

When used correctly, the #hashtag is a highly effective social media marketing tool. But, just as with all the other tools in your business toolbox, they have to be used correctly to be effective. So use these #tips to make sure your hashtags deliver the ultimate #marketing effects for your #business!

3 Tips To Using #Hashtags Effectively Without Going Overboard

As I was perusing my personal Facebook page this morning, I came across a post by a friend of a funny Youtube video by Jimmy Falon and Justin Timberlake called “#Hashtag”. Since I’m always up for a good laugh, and it’s related to a new technology / marketing phenomenon, I couldn’t resist and had to see what it was all about. After all, #hastags are everywhere now: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram - every time you turn around there is a #hashtag in your face. This video skit shares a funny look at how people are overusing the #hashtag. Take a peek at the video below, or by clicking here.

So, while the video is funny to watch, it does raise a very important point - people are overusing the #hashtag! Not only does this overuse  lead to annoying your followers, it also makes the hashtag completely ineffective.

We’ve written a number of articles here on Smallbiztechnology that discuss why you should use hashtags and the payoff you can receive by using them on social media platforms like Facebook. But what we obviously now need to discuss is how to properly and effectively use hashtags so they get you the marketing and engagement results you are looking for. Here are three tips you can follow to do that:

• Choose Your #Hashtags Carefully: The point of using a hashtag is to be found among the sea of social media postings, so the words you choose to hashtag have to be relevant to the conversations you are trying to take part in. For instance, if you want to be found by people looking for business information, include #business in your posting. I did a quick search on Facebook for “#business” and the image below shows the results. See how relevant that is to what the post is trying to achieve?

• Don’t Overuse The #Hashtag: Well…the video clearly demonstrates this point, doesn’t it?! Using too many hashtags will only confuse the conversation and it often makes the posting look like spam. A simple rule to follow is only using one or two hashtags in a post and making sure they hit on the most relevant topics of that posting. (see examples in image above). Another thing to remember is that just because the hashtag exists, you don’t always have to use it. Hashtags only work when they are relevant and take you someplace meaningful. Remember that!
• Put Your #Hashtag to the Test: Creating an effective hashtag isn’t about throwing a # sign in front of a word. It has to be something that is relevant and in use. If you aren’t sure if your hashtag is relevant, then test it. You can easily type it into the search bar in Facebook or Twitter and see what results are returned. You can also use sites such as Hashtags.org to see what’s trending now and choose relevant hashtags from there. Trending tags (assuming they are relevant) will further help you reach your target audience.

When used correctly, the #hashtag is a highly effective social media marketing tool. But, just as with all the other tools in your business toolbox, they have to be used correctly to be effective. So use these #tips to make sure your hashtags deliver the ultimate #marketing effects for your #business!

Reviewing Pros and Cons: Ready for a Breather?

I was trying to come up with a pros/cons cartoon for about a good week and it just wasn’t coming. I’d written out various lists of possible pros and cons and I knew I was close, but it just wasn’t quite there.

Then for some reason I jotted down “You’re Stupid!” as one of the cons and I was off and running. Eventually all of the original pros and cons got replaced with what you see here and the caption sort of ended up writing itself.

Looking back it’s surprising how much this cartoon was hiding in plain sight; I just needed that one little outburst to get things going.

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