Business Blogs: Trends, tips, and real-life anecdotes from industry experts.

With social marketing vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube all the rage, blogging has become somewhat of a forgotten stepchild. But this doesn’t make sense.
Blogging can be one of the most effective marketing tools for the small business owner. It’s easy to start, it’s easy to maintain and it’s easy to leverage in enhancing [...]

Heather Nolte notified the StartupNation community last week about Facebook’s new offering of vanity URLs (Facebook.com/YourNameHere) for individuals and businesses. Check out her post: Facebook Vanity Username…Get Yours June 13th 12:01am!.
Although any individual and many businesses were afforded the opportunity to secure personalized URLs from June 13th, business pages with fewer than 1000 fans and [...]

Just wanted to send a quick reminder to everyone regarding the use of vanity usernames on Facebook.  As of June 13th at 12:01am EDT you will be able to create a vanity username for your Facebook profile or fan page.
Image via CrunchBase
This is TERRIFIC NEWS and will undoubtedly help with SEO ranking, name recognition, and [...]

If you are the owner of an eCommerce website,  you are continuously looking for ways to improve the conversion rate on your site and to drive more sales. To that end, here are 45 tips to turbocharge your eCommerce site:
Define Your Audience

Segment your audience by lifetime value.
Segment your audience by recency (When was the last [...]

The home page is typically where most site visitors will enter your website.  It can determine whether a prospective customer is intrigued and eager to learn more, or is instead confused, frustrated and turned-off. Let’s face it – your home page is one of the “Money” pages on your website, so it better be effective.
Therefore, [...]

Running your own business? Looking for new ways to market your products or services online? Then read through The Internet Marketing Checklist for Small Business below, and see if you should be adding a few more tactics to your marketing toolbox.
THE INTERNET MARKETING CHECKLIST FOR SMALL BUSINESS

Website
You have a website, right? If not, create one. [...]

Today’s post covers 3 ways to find out if social media could make an impact on your company’s brand before spinning your wheels. You don’t want to start leading customers down a path if you don’t intend to commit to communication in a social world.
1)    Ask yourself, do your customers and the influencers in your [...]

A friend of mine is thinking of starting her own insurance business, but she can’t leave her full time job until she’s tested the waters and determines if she has what it takes or if there is enough demand for her offering. We talked about the kind of marketing practices she could dabble in that [...]

I typically focus on email marketing, since it is cost effective, it has a viral quality, and VerticalResponse happens to offer a great email solution for startups, but the following suggestions can apply to direct mail projects as well.
When designing your email campaign or your promotion mailing, from copy to layout, consider how your recipient [...]

Ever thought about writing like you dress in your online communications?
I gave a talk the other day on making the most of social media and email marketing and we got into the conversation of creating the voice for your company in your online presence. At VerticalResponse, and right here in my SUN blog, I generally [...]