Business Beginner

Think Twitter marketing is dead? Think again! The most recent presidential election is Exhibit A as Donald Trump's tweets, along with WikiLeaks and pundits on both sides, effectively influenced the historic election. The best brands and social media marketers still usually have a strong Twitter presence. Twitter is even on the verge of profitability for the first time ever! While Twitter has struggled over the years and isn't the place to be for young users (That honor of course belongs to Snapchat and Instagram for now... even thought Twitter still refers 10x the website traffic), it still remains a top social marketing platform and a requirement for most businesses. It provides endless opportunities to boost your brand and bottom line, so why isn't everyone dominating the Twitterscape?  Twitter marketing isn't a walk in the park like some may think, and it's getting tougher every day. There are approximately 300 Million monthly active users and billions of tweet...

Fellow bootstrapping business professionals: Snapchat is all the rage these days. A younger generation has transitioned away from "boring" Twitter and even "old people" social media leader Facebook (now that their parents and grandparents use it daily). All of the ads on these platforms certainly haven't helped either. Snapchat on the other hand is simple, fun, less commercialized, and has far less text to get in your way. A picture is worth a thousand words after all... so a Snapchat video might be worth 10,000! And like social media platform Pinterest , it's most likely heading for a multi-billion dollar IPO this year! ( Update : It's recent IPO values the company at around a staggering $25 Billion ). That means it's here to stay so you need to stop ignoring it and get on board.  Despite the incredible business potential available on a free platform with millions of users, chances are you aren't a Snapchat marketing superstar... yet. You mos...

Pinterest has been a popular social media platform for many years now and it has been successfully adopted by hundreds of thousands of businesses and entrepreneurs during this time. But not all marketers have gotten on board or fully utilized this versatile medium.  In fact, Pinterest seems to be one of the platforms that many companies choose to skip in favor of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn , YouTube, and even our mediocre friend Google Plus! I'm not saying you should ditch any of these tried and true platforms (except perhaps the lowly Google+ ... even though I personally use it almost daily to cover my bases), but you should give Pinterest a fair shot and maximize its potential. When most people think of Pinterest they usually think of DIY projects, design ideas, weddings, fashion, and fitness... but that's kind of like thinking  YouTube is just for cat videos, or that Instagram is just for Selfies (wait it's not?). Don't let this close-minded perspective...

I'm constantly asked about social media marketing, digital media, entrepreneurship, search engine optimization, retail sales, social selling, and many other topics through various outlets. These business questions come through my website, social media platforms, forums like Medium / Quora / Reddit / Ask /   Google / Inbound.org, and other outlets. When I have a lot of information to share on a particular subject I'll usually write an in-depth answer in the form of an article here... but I don't always have the time. Sometimes I just give a quick answer, or whatever initially comes to mind without prepping or brainstorming.  This series is reminiscent of  hustling entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk 's book #AskGaryVee (which I'm finishing now before posting a review), but I've actually been doing this for years with previous projects and businesses. My first  Bootstrap Business Blog Blitz  was a big hit so I'm making this a mainstay feature on my site...

Enjoy my most recent installment of Bootstrap Business Blog Blitz: answering your questions on social media marketing and more! These days how relevent is it for a blogger to have a Twitter account as opposed to an Instagram account? It’s still very important to have both in my opinion. I get 5–10x the blog and website traffic from my Twitter than I do from Instagram and it has helped my blog / website SEO tremendously. I think most bloggers that use both platforms successfully have a similar experience. Use both well to cover your bases. I like to remind people that “Twitter isn’t dead yet”. Why have I suddenly lost interest in social media pages like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter? I’d have to say that it’s probably a positive thing, unless you are using these platforms for business purposes. I’m on social media all day every day (mostly for work) and it gets old after awhile. Hopefully you are replacing the time you spent on social media with healthier and more productive activ...

Do you remember the days of the Dot-Com Bubble in the early part of this century? That was a time of high speculation and lofty expectations as to how the Internet was going to transform the enterprise world. One of the most unusual predictions made a couple of decades ago was related to the future of customer service, which some analysts believed would be nearly eliminated through automation and highly efficient business processes.  Fast forward to today: despite incredible advances in robotics , we are not even close to replacing customer service agents with automatons. If anything, consumers have become more demanding with regard to the support and service they expect from modern companies. In today's highly competitive economy, the customer service strategies of the 20th century will not allow you to thrive in your sector. If your approach to customer service has not changed too much since the year 2000, you really need to modernize your strategies. Here are four tips to get yo...