They certainly have.

Are blogs important for your business?
Blogs provide business owners with unprecedented ways of reaching and engaging with large audiences in a way that the traditional one-way information push of a company Web site could never do. Not only this, but blogs can help put a human face to your business while showcasing your knowledge and passion for your chosen field. For example, restaurant owners can share recipe secrets.

Just about anyone from a landscaping business to an IT security company can share tips of the trade that connect them with their customer base. And unlike the static content of a business Web site, blogs are collaborative and invite comment – a great way to engage with and solicit feedback from your customers!

Blogs can even be lead generating. I read and monitor blogs religiously and have nurtured leads and networked with businesses that I would not have known existed, had it not been for the viral marketing effect generated by their blogs. Of course, if you are thinking of starting a blog you need to have an underlying strategy in place to ensure it is a success.

Here are four things to consider before you enter the blogosphere:

Identify a Purpose, Goal and Intention for your Blog
While you obviously want to promote your business, don’t be over-promotional in your blog content strategy. Decide early on what you want to accomplish with your blog – and this should drive your content.

Most blogs are typically centered on positioning businesses or business owners as thought leaders in their space or for sharing information and tips that readers find useful.

Once you have defined your goal, be sure to adhere to it. Consider publishing your blog objective on your blog home page. For example, the objective of a hypothetical company – JJ’s Landscaping Services – might be to provide tips that help consumers maintain a thriving garden in all seasons, which could be summarized and published as: The Better Garden Blog Tips and Tools from our team of experts to keep your garden looking its best year round!

Getting Started – Blog Software
Once you have decided to start blogging, you will need to consider the software options available for hosting your blog. Many social media experts advise businesses to be wary of some of the free blog tools available, since their basic features don’t offer integration with existing business Web domains or allow for brand customization.

Truth be told, however, if you are just getting started with a blog, free blogging software can be a cost-effective and easy solution for many small businesses. If your blog does take off down the road, you might want to consider migrating to blog software that is installed on your domain and integrated with your Web site. And don’t forget to devise a communication plan to let your readers know that you are moving hosts.

Commit to Blogging Regularly and with Relevance
There are two tell tale signs that a blog has lost its way – no posts for two weeks or more, and content that has veered off course. Neither will give a favorable impression of your company.

If you can’t commit to posting at least 2-3 times a week, then blogging is not going to work for your business. And this is something to consider before you even start your blog. A good way to keep posts regular is to share duties with others. This also adds a diversity of voices. Having an editorial calendar can also keep you on track. Written in advance (for the coming month or quarter), an editorial calendar should include not just the working title of upcoming posts, but a summary of the objective of each post too.

Also include hyperlinks to other resources that can help you craft your post quickly and efficiently when it comes time to write. Don’t forget to include placeholders for topical posts that spring up at the last minute. For example, in the case of our hypothetical company – JJ’s Landscaping Services – topical posts that address current issues such as protracted weather conditions can keep your blog relevant and compelling.

Develop a Plan to Generate Traffic to your Blog
Last, but by no means least, generating traffic to your blog is critical. The trouble is, many bloggers either do nothing to leverage the tactics available to them, or they go overboard and saturate their blog pages with links and social media icons to drive inbound traffic.

There are many traditional and non-traditional ways to drive traffic to your blog – from ensuring you have RSS feeds built in to adding a link to your blog from other customer touch points such as your email signature and main business Web site.

It’s worth knowing that Uncle Sam offers access to free data that can help you understand your market and analyze consumer trends and demographics. In fact, the federal government is the largest producer of data in the U.S. with numerous offices dedicated to collecting, analyzing and providing free access to their findings – good news for budget-conscious small business owners.

Here are five government sources of market data and statistics that may boost your market research efforts:

Business Data and Statistics from SBA.gov
A good place to start is SBA.gov’s Business Data and Statistics page, where you’ll find a collection of resources providing free access to information about business and economic conditions and indicators collected by the U.S. government. Whether you sell to businesses or consumers, these sites include data and statistics on income, employment, trade, and manufacturing, and plenty more.

The U.S. Census Bureau
The U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov) maintains a vast repository of information that is quick and easy to navigate, thanks to a variety of Data Access Tools. For example, with The American FactFinder, just enter a city and state and the tool will generate multiple options for viewing social, economic, household and demographic data for your town or future location.

The main site has also been newly re-launched to make it very simple to find the data you need, including a neat interactive map that shows a mash-up of economic and demographic statistics for any town, city, or state in America.

If you like what you see but are not sure how to use and interpret the data, the Census Bureau hosts seminars across the country to help business owners learn more about business and industry data on the site. Learn more.

FedStats.gov
If you want data but don’t know which agency maintains or produces it, head on over to FedStats.gov. This no-frills data-driven site provides access to a full range of official statistical information produced by the federal government without having to know in advance which federal agency produces which particular statistic. Data is available on wide-ranging topics, including economic and population trends, crime, education, health care, aviation safety, energy use, and farm production.

Small Business Statistics
Interested in statistics about how small business is doing? The SBA Office of Advocacy conducts and publishes its own research on topics such as the small business economy.

EconomicIndicators.gov
For briefings on retail sales, durable goods, manufacturing, construction, new home sales, and more, Economicindicators.gov provides access to daily releases of key economic indicators from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau. This is probably your best bet if you’re looking for one site that says it all.

Additional Resources
Visit SBA’s guide to Conducting Market Research for tips on how to put this data and other information to use.

About the Author:
Caron Beesley is a small business owner, a writer, and marketing communications consultant. Caron works with the SBA.gov team to promote essential government resources that help entrepreneurs and small business owners start-up, grow and succeed.

Most major corporations still prioritize traditional media. As popular as social media is becoming, the traditional giants still defer to television. This gives small businesses the inside track for dominating on the Internet and beating them to the punch. Where a viral video promoting 1 800 Vending may have been swallowed alive in the sea of television advertising, on the Internet it receives nine lives or more. There is no centralized home online; a viral video can spread to as many corners as you want and for much less money.

Viral video is much less expensive to produce. Viral video is a form of guerrilla marketing. The content does not have to be glossy or professionally produced. A successful viral video captures the essence of some barely articulated social meme and makes it catchy. A big budget may be just as ineffective at capturing this essence as a small budget. In this way viral video adds an element of democratization to media. The little guys have a chance now!

YouTube is transforming into a media provider. For most of its existence, YouTube has operated as a social media hub for user generated content. That is changing now as YouTube is set on altering its business model into that of a traditional broadcaster, providing original content and advertising, YouTube has partnered with major agencies, actors and directors and will soon be rolling out TV-like channels of original programming. While their user generated content will still be available, YouTube will soon look a lot more like cable TV, meaning viral video will be exposed to new eyes and will have the opportunity to make small businesses stand out even more.

Viral video alone may not be enough to catapult a small business into exponential sales growth. That said, many innovative marketing campaigns-including film promotions, startups, and new product lines-are utilizing viral video in order to tap into niche communities and appeal to new demographics and markets.

I believe in the business planning process as the secret to good management. That means you use a flexible business plan, reviewed and revised often, to manage strategy, objectives, measurements, performance, tasks, people, and basic numbers. And that’s as true with social media as with any other function in business.

Therefore, I’m recommending these three steps to manage your social media business activities using your business plan. I’m thinking mainly of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, but I hope these three steps will apply to any other social media effort or platform as well.

1.Set strategy.
Strategy starts with focus and includes goals. It can include short- and long-term goals.

Think about what you’re going to do with social media in a business sense. Set realistic business objectives. Are you going to generate leads, answer complaints, engage with customers, or something else? Will you be doing all of the above? How will this relate to other functions and tools, like the rest of the marketing plan or the rest of customer service? Try to stay focused and be specific.

In terms of format, it doesn’t matter. The simplest form of strategy is a collection of bullet points. It serves as a reminder of priorities and goals when things get busy and hard to manage.

2.Set specifics.
Strategy alone isn’t enough. You need to add specific concrete information including how you will measure progress, what progress you expect to see, who is responsible for what tasks, and how often you’re going to review and revise.

For example, if your strategy includes Twitter, you should define what you’re going to tweet, and who will do it, what tools they’ll be using (for example, HootSuite or CoTweet or TweetDeck), and what performance measurements are important. The measurement might be posts, updates, likes, followers, connections, leads, customer incidents handled, or even the very trendy Klout score, which measures influence.

Be sure you have specifics you can track. Ask yourself how you’ll know, next month, whether you are on plan or not.

3.Manage results.
Just exactly like the rest of your business plan, the social media portions need to be managed, followed up, tracked, discussed, and revised regularly.

Schedule monthly meetings in advance. Invite everybody involved. List what numbers you’re going to be tracking and make sure it’s clear who is responsible for what.

When the meetings take place, start by reviewing assumptions, then review goals and performance measurement, one by one. Where things are better than planned, somebody should get praise. Where things are worse than planned, somebody should be prepared to discuss what went wrong and how to correct it.

Final thought: Does this sound familiar? As if social media belongs in your business planning process like every other important function in the business? Good. That’s what I hoped you’d say.

About the Author
Founder and Chairman of Palo Alto Software and bplans.com, on twitter as Timberry, blogging at timberry.bplans.com. Stanford MBA. Married 42 years, father of 5. Author of business plan software Business Plan Pro and www.liveplan.com and books including The Plan As You Go Business Plan, published by Entrepreneur Press, 2008.

These days, many businesses use social media for everything from e-commerce and advertising to brand management. The one in the three number becomes particularly surprising when you look at the breakdowns: only 7 percent of small businesses use microblogging like Twitter and only 8 percent use blogs. Another 8 percent use location-based networks like Facebook Places, Foursquare, and Gowalla.

The study revealed that the reason small businesses have been reluctant to implement social media tactics into their operational purviews is that they have found them to be ineffective, or falling shorting of their demands. Obviously it’s hard to know or generalize why this is the case, but one could proffer a guess and say that these companies are not using social media optimally. More on this in a minute.

Perhaps the most surprising statistic that emerged from this study was that as of 2011, slightly over half of small businesses had websites. That means that nearly half of the nation’s small businesses are sans websites-in other words, relatively invisible on the Internet. Considering the relatively inexpensive nature of Internet services like content management systems and hosting services, it seems nearly incomprehensible that business owners would not represent themselves on the most dynamic, growth-assured medium in the history of civilization. These businesses are depriving themselves of incredibly powerful tools like SEO (which only 27% said they used), crowdsourcing, and viral videos.

This brings us back to the reason why small businesses may feel that social media is failing them. Social media is not an end in itself. It is best used as a vehicle by which to transmit and promote messages. If a company doesn’t have a website or blog and is not practicing SEO in order to tap niche markets and target online consumers, social media is limited in what it can accomplish.

A more comprehensive study might try to mine the ways in which small business owners are integrating social media into their other online efforts, such as website optimization, blogging and SEO. Until then, it will continue to be surprising that so many small businesses still do not use social media to promote growth.

Thus, the marketing industry was born – specifically the Internet marketing industry. Countless companies and individuals exist to help small businesses succeed in the art of capturing attention amidst ostensibly unending competition.

While spending money on such effective services as ReputationManagers.com and SEO consultants is sure to result in improved marketing for your brand, don’t make the mistake of thinking you must seek outside help. The dirty little secret about Internet marketing is that most of it can be taken care of by small businesses themselves, especially in the beginning.

Here are six key components of Internet marketing than startups should have no problem tackling on their own:

Establishing a strong social media presence: Chances are you have a Facebook profile, and maybe you Tweet as well. It doesn’t get more complicated when using these social media services for your small business. Paying someone else to manage your free social media profiles is unnecessary considering the amount of information online that focuses on ways small businesses can use such services.

Safeguarding an online reputation: Protecting your image on the Internet sounds like quite the undertaking, but it oftentimes requires nothing more than staying updated on your social media profiles and securing relevant domains. If negative information related to your brand makes it to the top of search results, there isn’t anything a third-party firm can do that you can’t do yourself. Such services are merely a matter of convenience.

Going mobile: By the middle of this decade, it’s projected that mobile web traffic will quadruple from where it was in 2010. Your small business website and pertinent online profiles must be mobile-friendly, but it isn’t as hard as it sounds. Simply use a mobile browser emulator to see what your site looks like to specific mobile users. Only seek assistance if you notice any problems with navigation, or if mobile searches do not count you among the results.

Improving SEO: If you’ve taken the proper steps to protect your online reputation, establish a social media presence, and become visible to mobile users, then you’ve already done quite enough to improve your search engine optimization. But simply always be mindful of the keywords used most in searches and make an effort to integrate them into your website to add more oomph to your search rankings.

Spreading real world awareness: Don’t neglect the power of promotional items, QR codes, and other modern marketing elements that exist in reality. Distributing flash drives with your company logo on them throughout a college campus or other area with a high number of potential consumers is something you can do yourself, once you pay for the products to be made of course.

Networking with other businesses: In today’s world, it’s almost impossible to go at consumers alone on a small scale, and thus many small businesses have opted to join forces via various networks over the years. Whether it’s through promotions or advertisement, rubbing elbows with more established entities with customers you may be able to serve is a great way to take huge marketing strides when starting a small business.

Small business start-ups cannot afford to ignore the importance of marketing in the Internet age, but that doesn’t mean they have to throw precious funds away paying someone else to tackle such critical tasks. There’s plenty in the realm of marketing that small businesses can do themselves, especially when it comes to their web presence. Give it a go on your own before committing to the costlier albeit just-as-effective strategies of someone else.

“We added quick-switch multi-profile management and unlimited analytics reporting to Statf.ly Pro to meet the growing demands of time-strapped agencies and brand managers overseeing content distribution and communications for multiple social client profiles,” says Statf.ly CEO, Bryan Crick. “Statf.ly will continue to grow its suite of management and analytics features with a usability-first philosophy that is both economical and efficient.”

Statf.ly enables users to store Twitter and Facebook history, keywords, and report annotations for up to one year, which is valuable for generating more compelling long term analysis, in depth quarterly reports and annual strategy reviews.

The Statf.ly platform provides users the ability to efficiently:

• Manage and distribute content on multiple social profiles
• Monitor keywords and conversations on Facebook and Twitter (Google analytics coming soon)
• Perform live searches on Twitter and Facebook
• Measure the results of interactions through a filtered set of data points
• Create and monitor campaigns via Bitly
• Generate unlimited one-click analytics reporting (for Statf.ly Pro)
• Collaborate with team members on data analysis with data point annotation, sharability and PDF export
• Store social data such as Twitter and Facebook history, keywords, and report annotations for up to 1 year

The StatFly platform makes the management, interactivity and analysis of social engagement strategies as effective and efficient as possible for business. For more information, visit http://statf.ly.

A corporate website needs to be professional, meetings need to be professional, and branding a business needs to be done in a professional manner, for the most part at least. The blog is an opportunity for businesses to connect with their customers on a more personal level. When a clean cut corporate blog is littered with a bunch of wordiness along with a few charts or graphs, although it might offer great information, nobody ends up reading it. Successful blogs are the ones that connect with their audience on a personal level.

One of the best ways of connecting with an audience is through taking the mask off of the blog and revealing the real people behind the slogans and logos.

One of the easiest and most neglected ways of giving a blog a personal touch is by posting pictures of the people who work in the company. Presenting a picture in front of the reader inspires trust because it shows that the company is not hiding behind a curtain, and seeing a picture of a person naturally makes the blog more personal.

The online shoe store sensation “Zappos” intersperses their blog posts between shoes and fashion focused posts with fun posts featuring their employees. In honor of the new year and the resolutions that come with it, Zappos produced a post about how four of their employees lost a total of 50 pounds, and how they did it. Through posts like these customers are able to connect with the company on a personal level.

Another thing that corporate blogs often sadly neglect is their audience, while the great bloggers show a great appreciation and consideration for their audiences. Obviously, a corporate blog is expected to present products, but the way to present products in a blog is not the same as in an advertisement. Since successful blogging is a more personal art form the presentation needs not be “salesy,” but rather it should be more like show-and-tell.

Although being obvious in other forms of marketing, corporate blogs also often neglect to give their audience what they want. If, for instance, a certain business’s main market is teenagers it would behoove them to have a cool blog with a youthful twist, whereas if another business’s main market is other businesses they should consider a more clean and professional look.

There is one advantage that corporate blogs have over the average blogger. When a reader comes to a corporate blog to find out a little more about the company, the corporate blog can give them something extra special by presenting lesser-known information about the interworking of the company.

Additionally, the blog can be the place for posting promotions. By making the reader feel like he or she is “in on things” that the rest of the world aren’t, the corporate blog can show appreciation to their readers by giving them something a little extra special. And that is also a great way to produce blog posts that go viral.

Author Bio:
Scott Hersh is a business blogger for BCAblog.com the official blog of BusinessCashAdvance.com, leaders in merchant financing.

But what now? How can you work to grow that site before your product or service has even been launched? How can the site serve as a spur to your business without costing you too much money in the early going?

To answer these questions, here’s a basic step-by-step process for insuring that you put out an appropriate site and start driving people to it, thus leaving you room to worry about the many other issues that probably sit on your plate.

Step 1: Insure Quality
When your website first goes online, it probably isn’t fully developed or as extensive as you’d like it to eventually be. That’s okay. Just make sure that your website accomplishes two objectives: that it is informative and that it is professional. As people hear about your start-up and become interested in learning more, they will likely turn to the website for information both broad and specific. Make sure that this information is provided clearly and directly, without requiring any work on the viewer’s part.

As for professionalism, the establishment of your website is likely the first action that confers your business’s legitimacy to the general public. You want to insure that it confers credibility, as well.

Step 2: Start Marketing
You don’t need a full-fledged internet campaign to market your site at this point; you shouldn’t feel obligated to bury yourself in SEO tactics or consider expensive advertising opportunities. However, you do want to put some marketing gears into place, specifically by taking advantage of the free advertising offered through social media. Create a Facebook page that links back to your site. Start a Twitter feed. Get friends, relatives, and colleagues to help you spread the word. Work to amass a mailing address. Simply put, it’s always best to explore your free marketing avenues as early as possible.

Step 3: Be Ready To Analyze
Although your site and your business both are still small, you want to insure that the apparatus is in place for analyzing consumer data as customers begin to build. To this end, you may want to install an analytics program that can track, synthesize, and analyze data that is generated by traffic to your site. Such programs include Omniture’s analytics offerings, specifically Omniture’s website optimization plan.

After you’ve completed these steps, you can sit back and wait until your business is more mature before developing your site further. To be sure, you’re going to want at some point to further consider site design, features, and advertising, but before you grow your site too much it’s important to spend some time growing your business.

If you’re a small-business owner, creating a distinct brand image for your product or service is essential – and can be accomplished through some very simple methods. Karen Post, author of “Brand Turnaround,” offers tips for small businesses looking to create a memorable, impactful brand or image:

Start with a game plan – Ask yourself, how do you want people or customers to think about you or your business? Consider what your story is and what makes your product, service and company unique. Is your persona sophisticated and established, trendy and progressive, or creative and fun?

Make your marketing consistent – Keeping a consistent message across all your marketing materials and efforts can help customers remember your brand. Cross media consistency is key – from printed materials to website and online image — to reinforce the personality of your company.

Make it yours – Distinction cuts through clutter. Consistently communicate what’s unique about your brand and company. Whether you are at a networking event with business cards, using brochures and flyers to advertise or targeting prospects through postcards, Staples makes it easy to get a similar look and feel with professional design capabilities and print experts.

Audit your brand “touch points” – How does your marketing message come in contact with – or touch – your customers? Many small businesses reach customers through postcards, flyers, letterhead, banners, brochures and other marketing materials. Staples Copy & Print, for example, offers a full range of products and services that help businesses get their printing done quickly and easily, whenever and wherever it’s convenient for them.

While online marketing efforts like social media and search engine optimization can be effective tools for reaching customers, don’t overlook the continued importance of traditional branding tools. Printed materials such as postcards, letterhead and business cards continue to be a prime way for small businesses to communicate with current, new and potential customers and offer that lasting brand impression.

Digital printing technology has made it easier than ever to customize this type of material and get what you need quickly. Gone are the days when a small business would have to wait weeks for new business cards. Now, thanks to services like Staples Copy & Print, you can get customized marketing materials – including flyers, brochures and more – in less than a week. Simple items such as business cards can even be done in a matter of hours and picked up in store the same day.

Online services offer customization; however the professionals at Staples can provide guidance and expertise in customizing your marketing materials. Professional design capabilities mean you can leave all the technical work of creating print products to the experts. Or, if it’s more convenient, you can order products online and pick them up in your local store.

Creating and conveying a unique brand message is an important aspect of a small business’ overall marketing efforts. Fortunately, a combination of modern technology and traditional tools can make it easy for small businesses to communicate their branding message to current and potential customers.