From Café to Walled City

Word Spreads

Once word of the availability of free Internet spread, adults from the community started showing up regularly. While helping folks use the Internet, the owner learned that most of his clients did not have bank accounts, and were forced to cash their cheques at payday loan companies and pay significant fees. Sensing a needed service that could also be a business opportunity, an alliance was quickly formed with a credit card company that allowed him to cash cheques by putting the money instantly on prepaid credit cards. Several times a month, when the different organizations send out cheques, there is quite a flurry of card activity at the centre.


The requests for Internet access grew, and the demand for food all but disappeared, so more booths were removed and computer work stations installed. At this point, computer usage was starting to overshadow his business and take an inordinate amount of the owner’s time. Some folks were homesteading on the computers and tempers were starting to flare, so a timecodee system was introduced to automatically limit usage. Soon people were offering to pay for additional time, and a new profit centre was born.

As part of his community activist role, the owner did not want people without any money to be squeezed off the computers entirely. First he instituted a program where anyone was able to receive a free 15 minute time code. Then, since he had always allowed those without financial means to do things around the centre to “earn” a soda, bag of chips, etc., he just expanded it to include computer time.
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The Great Ideazine

Boost Your Business With Blogging!

A business blog is an incredible on-line marketing tool that can save you thousands of dollars while providing a great business opportunity in just one click. Blogs are a user-friendly, customizable and flexible medium for spreading useful information for the effective positioning of your products in the market.

Companies engaging in business blogging have a definite edge over their competitors. Here are some advantages:

Word-of-Mouth

In a recent survey, it was determined that there are currently 14 million blogs with 80,000 more being added each day. About 30 percent of Internet users are blog readers. Imagine how much your company will gain, if your products are advertised through blogs. With the Internet, information spreads quickly, especially if an impressive write-up goes with your product. Soon your blogs will be passed on to hundreds of possible customers.

Awareness and Loyalty

Open communication with your customers creates trust and loyalty among them. Being there to respond to their questions and comments make them all the more willing to try your products and services.

Feedback

Blogs are good for product research and reviews. It would be easier to improve on your products if you observe your customers’ thinking and behaviour patterns. You can also take immediate action to address your customers’ concerns.

Community Halo-Effect

Bloggers are reasonable, friendly and helpful. They are more than willing to create a blogosphere of comments regarding your product. The only thing you have to do is embrace and take active part in the culture and your product will surely be considered in their next stop to the supermarket.

For better marketing results, actively promote your business blogs by submitting your blogs to blog search sites and directories. Do not forget to paste your URL in your blogs. Be sure that your blog posts contain exclusive information with value and are always updated to keep readers popping in, and reading your posts. You want to be sure that when even though they move on to the next blog, that they will return to your blog frequently for updates.

A blog is like a setup booth in the biggest trade show on earth everyday. Marketing possibilities are just around the corner waiting to boost your sales..

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) Feeds

RSS feeds are important too when used in conjunction with your blogs to maximize the benefits of your blog posts. Use effective keyword phrases to generate high ranking status in the search engine traffic. This will give you a better chances of having people find your blog. More traffic means more potential sales.

Providing an RSS feed will guarantee that your readers can get news of your latest posts as soon as they are made.

Getting Started

Once you are convinced of the potential of a business blog for marketing and targeting sales increase, you are ready to start a blog. The first thing to do is to determine whether or not that you can create a blog that is in tune with your company’s business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve your goal.

There are several blogs dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging, READ them! Include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based to get some ideas about what is being done currently. Once your reading is done, set up a test blog right away.

If your initial blog worked well, you should now start thinking about setting up several more blogs.

Study Blog Design

Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your artist to design and layout your blog site to match your company’s identity and needs.

Choose a Topic

It’s good to have a line-up of topics that you want for your blogs. Be sure that they are in agreement with your business objectives. This will be a test of your flexibility and open-mindedness since results may not support the blog or blogs you thought were going to be the most productive.

Safety Measures in Blogging

1. legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging; it is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities;

2. in the corporate world, communication and legal departments are responsible for educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business. In your small business, you may wish to checking out legal issues with your lawyer;

3. create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information is allowed to be made public. This is a good exercise even if you are a one-person business;

Best Practices

1. avoid outright marketing on your blog or you will chase away your readers;

2. make sure that your content is updated, relevant and fresh;

3. make sure that your blog reinforces your company’s core values; and,

4. if you have employees, encourage them to use it.


Start Blogging

1. complete 20 posts before going to marketing.

2. once you do have the 20 posts, begin marketing like crazy.

3. regularly monitor the coming and going of your readers.

4. measure your results.

5. based on your monitoring, adjust your blog if needed. You can always play with your designs in the blog site as long as it continues to match your company’s identity.

6. Try to have your blogs in unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.

7. Strive to be consistent with your topic all the time.

8. Schedule updates regularly. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days to update your blogs.

Once you have done all these things, you will rapidly come to enjoy the benefits of business blogging.

Good luck and great profits.