As a small business owner you may be on a job that is usually reserved for two people or more – and you may be running around more than you ought to. (Doesn’t everyone feel that way?) If only you can split yourself in two! Well, spare yourself with these helpful apps. If you have a mobile smartphone like the iPhone or the Android, you can make use of the tools and applications to improve your workflow. After all, these phones are made for more than checking your E-mail, you know. To-Do Lists Outlook Mobile has a nice, task-syncing feature for your smartphone that lets you send meeting requests, track attendance, received detailed responses, and much more. If you’re using an iPhone, there’s the very flexible Toodledo, which synchronizes your tasks without requiring Internet connection. For Android users, use Astrid, a simple task recording dashboard for mobile that lists and tracks your To-Do list. Like the two previous tools, it’s – Read the full article
Marketing research isn’t what it used to be. It has expanded to include the world of websites, blogs, social media, online advertising, and other web-based media. The great thing about this all is that there are lots of tools you can use conduct market research and gather competitive intelligence. Our top posts on Lakeshore Branding have been about social media monitoring and competitive intelligence. So I thought we would share some our favorite tools and this list turned into a description of 29 tools for competitive intelligence. So check out the list and please let us know if we are missing any. 1. SpyFu: Spyfu is a tool that lets you find out what keywords your competitors are targeting in the search engines. Not just keywords, mind you, but AdWords, too. All you have to do is type your competitor’s site in SpyFu’s search bar, and voila! Immediate results that show you the keyword and AdWords landscape for that domain. – Read the full article
Looking to boost local traffic to your site? It’s a must these days, especially if you’re a small business. Getting listed puts you on the online map. Optimizing that listing lets your customers and potentials know where and how to find you. Local SEO: it’s all about getting local consumers in the door and the phone ringing. Here are 6 things that you absolutely must do when optimizing your local business listing. We say ‘must do’; you don’t want to lose out on higher rankings, do you? 1. Claim and submit. List your business at Google Maps. This, you should know already. But it doesn’t end there. Take advantage of other search engines. Claim your listing at Yahoo! Local, Bing Local and Best of the Web. They’re free to submit your information. On top of that, submit your information to major data providers like InfoUSA, Acxiom, and Localeze. The more listings you have in more local business directories, the more – Read the full article
Attention small business owners who think social networking is silly: knock it off. We know you’re just afraid, or confused, but you can’t hide behind those excuses any longer. With the recent announcements of Bing and Twitter integration, and Google’s Social Search, your business can’t hide any longer. Those angry tweets about your poor quality that you ignore? Yep, those are appearing in searches right next to your latest press-release. Photos of your day-old looking food you served up are not only on Flickr, but now they’re in any searches people may perform who are friends with those folks. Bottom line: you’re bad service and poor products are going to be exposed faster, to a wider audience, and with lasting impact. So get involved; interact with your customers, make them feel welcome, make them feel something. Have a great product? Good. Lots of people are no doubt talking about it. Let them know you’re listening. Encourage them to make those – Read the full article
Lakeshore Branding is proud to host these five FREE hands-on small business marketing sessions in November that will offer practical advice, direct instruction, and application tips for free online and social media solutions to help small businesses and entrepreneurs in Chicago. “The ‘hands-on’ sessions started as things often do, with neighbors and friends asking each other for help and advice on something new,” said Gabrielle Blair, one of the founders of Kirtsy. “Women often get together to compare notes. And there are a lot of us who want to talk right now about how social media and online applications can simplify our lives and enhance our small business pursuits.” After Kirtsy hosted 10 Hands-On Social Media sessions with Microsoft Office Live in June, they received a fleet of requests to host more of these informal, intimate gatherings across the US and Canada. At the events, attendees cover popular platforms and get hands-on direction setting up accounts and applying them to – Read the full article
Recently there have been a lot of discussions in the web design community about the issues of dealing with Internet Explorer 6 with the recent release of IE 8. One web designer has begun showing this image above for users that still use IE 6. Check out the landing page here. The fustration for the team comes when you basically have to code the website 3, 4, 5 different ways so that it is functional in all major browsers. One of the biggest users of IE 6 is the corporate IT community who does not like to upgrade browsers that work. Our stance: Lakeshore Branding still supports Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 as well as FireFox 2+, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera. Creating seperate style sheets can be a pain for any web development team, but with some websites still seeing 30% or more of their visitors using the outdated browser, it is crutical you support it for your – Read the full article
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), everybody wants to be on the same page: Page One. And why not? The benefits of consistently showing up first on Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, and other search engines are obvious. Businesses of all sizes and across all industries recognize the value and benefits of an optimized site, such as: increased number of visitors. Better brand recognition. Potentially higher transactions and sales, and potentially increased market share. Nowadays, you can’t afford not to optimize. One of Lakeshore Branding’s core strengths is Search Engine Optimization. We work step-by-step in a process that’s proven its success with our previous clients. We look at your on-page optimization and link development strategies. We study your competition. We customize our SEO packages to cater to your specific needs, goals, and budget. And we make sure that we deliver organic results consistently, so that at the end of the day you enjoy the edge that you need to – Read the full article
Before the Internet, businesses used to include their listings in local business directories. Remember the Yellow Pages or the Blue Book? You might think they’re old-fashioned now, but actually this process of finding local businesses simply evolved into online local business listings. Search engines are showing local business results that specify industry specialties with a geographic focus, which are getting more and more precise every single day. And you know what? Local search is poised to become even bigger, thanks to the continued growth of online maps, mobile browsing, local search engines, city guides, online review sites, and geo-location services (like Facebook Check-Ins, Foursquare, Google Places, etc.). Local Search and Local SEO All these make local search or local business SEO a must for your business. Whether you like it or not, you have to get listed. Lakeshore Branding is ready to help. Our team optimizes your local search information and listings, so that when customers conduct a local search, – Read the full article
