The online advertising industry is one of the fastest growing industries as of late. According to an eMarketer report, online ad spending will grow 20% this year to reach $31.3 billion. As a small business owner, that leaves us wondering where all this online advertising success if being found?

Well, the majority of online advertising spending is found in search, with Google and other search engine giants set to take in $14.4 billion. However other advertising methods are growing steadily, and slowly seeing measurable results with small business marketing.

Banner Ads (Display Advertising)
In 2011, banner ads will grow roughly 22%, making online ad spending a $7.6 billion dollar industry. eMarketer is quoted with, “as more people view more pages, banner inventory growth will outpace pricing growth—but the bottom line leads to more overall dollars as more marketers, including local ones, buy more display ads.” Display ads priced on a CPM scale can offer superior value for your small business. Here are 3 tips to follow if you are thinking about purchasing banner advertisements in the near future:

1. Always evaluate a potential publisher’s audience and choose quality traffic over quantity.
2. Make sure your product is “brandable” and test display ads before investing too heavily in banner.
3. Test different landing pages and different ad copy consistently.

Video Advertising
Video is seeing success amongst big, corporate companies for its engagement figures however; can this medium translate to small businesses? I think if done correctly video poses a huge opportunity for small businesses in 2011. Video is not only engaging, but it is being leveraged in different placeholders within websites to improve retention.

According to the same eMarketer survey, video ads are set to grow 52% this year to $2.2 billion. For SMBs, video poses somewhat of an uncharted territory. The barriers to entry are high and many small businesses will need to see demonstrated success that this medium works before jumping in. With a targeted ad network of publishers and an engaging message, I think small businesses can really benefit from video. Personally, as a consumer, I would trust a video message from a local business much more than a corporate online commercial.

Both banner and video pose opportunities for engagement. As banner continues to be driven by mobile ad spending and video remains, somewhat of a dark horse; I think that business can successfully leverage these advertising platforms in their marketing mix. All that is needed is a highly targeted publisher, a focused and clear message and bit of faith.

Guest Author – Matt Krautstrunk is a writer on topics ranging from social media marketing to telephone systems at Resource Nation, an online resource providing small business payroll services tips for SMBs and entrepreneurs.

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When it comes to blogging, one of the most important steps is selecting the perfect theme for your blog. Of course content is important, but your theme plays a critical role in grabbing and maintaining your visitor’s attention. In some cases, your theme is the deciding factor for whether a visitor stays on your blog a little longer or immediately leaves after getting the information they came for. Equally, a bad theme design can turn visitors away and discourage repeat visits. Here are 8 key elements to look gor when choosing a theme for your blog:

1. Uniqueness and Originality
First impressions are everything. You want a unique theme that will stand out from the rest. You’ll never be the only one to use a theme (unless you design it yourself), but the more unique it is, the better. There is nothing worse than having a theme that your readers have seen many times before on other blogs.

It helps to use premium paid themes rather than free themes. Many bloggers are not willing to spend money on a theme, so you’re sure to be in the minority if you purchase a nice premium theme through a reputable WordPress theme source.

If you are a designer and good with HTML and CSS, consider creating your own theme. That way, you know that no other blog will look like yours.

2. Readability and Layout
It’s important to pick the right colors for your theme. There shouldn’t be any kind of contrasting colors or elements that make it hard to read your content. Using light text on a dark background is a huge no-no because it’s very hard on the eyes. Stick to dark text on a light background.

Also, verify the design and placement of the top header. This is one of the first things people will notice when they visit your blog, and it gives visitors a good sense of what your blog is all about. It shouldn’t be too big or too small. Ensure there is room to add the name of your blog since some headers are small and do not allow for long blog names. Check out things like white space, padding around images, content headers and bulleted list. These need to be formatted properly. Navigation is also important because this is how your users will search for and be directed to other content on your blog. If it’s not right in front of them, they’ll get frustrated and just give up. Your navigation should be highly visible, easy to get to, and employ proper functionality.

3. SEO Friendly
The structure and coding of your blog must be SEO friendly so that search engines like Google can easily find and index your content. To identify the SEO friendliness of your theme, take a quick look at the HTML coding of the front page, individual posts, and individual pages. Use header tags (H1, H2, etc), especially on the top header where the blog name and description goes. Also use H1 tags on the headlines of your posts, pages, and archives page.

While there are numerous WordPress SEO plugins that you can use to add more SEO features and override many of these things, the less plugins you have to use the better. Plugins increase page load time, so if your theme is already SEO friendly, you won’t have to worry about using additional plugins to make up for the lack of SEO friendliness.

4. Website Load Time
Your theme should not have so much going on that it slows the site down– large images, widgets, plugins, etc. The longer your page load time, the more more readers you’ll lose. Visitors are impatient, often stressed for time and want to get to your content as quickly as possible. A slow loading theme will cause people to lose interest, complain, leave and possibly never return again.

5. Mobile Friendly
With the growing popularity of mobile devices, you’re bound to have more mobile-sourced traffic. The theme you choose should function properly on mobile devices. Some WordPress themes are not very mobile-friendly, but there are WordPress plugins and Web services to help you mobilize your blog.

6. Valid Code
Having a theme with valid code is so important for a few reasons. It’s great for SEO and also helps to keep up the speed of your blog. The higher percentage of valid code, the less problems your readers will have when accessing your blog from various browser types. Since HTML tags and elements get depreciated quite often, valid code ensures that there are no issues with your blog in future versions of different web browsers. Also, the less HTML errors you have, the easier it will be for search engine spiders to crawl your site–important for getting your blog indexed.

7. Cross-Browser Compatibility
As mentioned earlier, it’s important that your theme can be viewed properly in all web browsers. Since it is difficult to test every single browser, focus on the most popular browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera. It is unlikely that your readers will use the same browser, so you can’t just focus on one. Most premium themes ensure cross-browser compatibility, which is another advantage to purchasing a premium theme. Test your theme in each browser or use a browser compatibility testing tool to make sure everything looks good and functions properly.

8. Support
If you ever have any issues with your theme, it’s important to be able to get help from the designer. Make sure that you’re using a theme from a reputable source that has a support forum or at least a contact form that you can use to get help if needed. If not, you’ll be stuck trying to figure things out for yourself and could mess up your theme and hurt the functionality of your blog.

Guest Author – Lior Levin is an online marketing consultant for an online neon signs store company and also works for a live chat customer service software company.

Do you find yourself completely lost with the different social media websites out there?  Which one should you start with? How to do it? There are indeed many questions that can bother a small business owner that is now starting in the social media world. Below are 5 tips that might prove helpful when it comes to managing your social media sites.

1. Don’t Overdo It
Some small business owners feel the need to sign up for all the social media websites out there – this is a big mistake and can become unmanageable very quickly. Look for the sites that matter the most for your own business and sign up for them. Among the sites most small businesses find useful are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

2. Search for Your Competitors
One way to determine which site to join is to look at what your more social media savvy competitors are doing online. Analyze your competitor’s presence to find out what sites they use and the content they publish. Use this insight to help devise your own social media campaign to promote your small business.

3. Read Daily
As with all online technology, changes happen daily with new features being released regularly. Devote some time to learn about new changes in the social media world and make sure that you make the most of them for your small business. Make use of RSS readers in order to follow some of the top blogs and to learn about the latest developments.

4. Monitoring
Without any kind of monitoring, it’s difficult to find out whether your social media marketing campaigns are delivering results.

• First, use of Google Alerts to find out where your company name is being mentioned on the web.
• Second, use Twitter Search to search for your company name in conversations. Find out what other people are saying about your company, your brand, their kudos, and their complaints.
• Lastly, you can also use Facebook’s search functionality to find out what other people are saying about your business.

5. Respond to Critics
I know some small business managers fear allowing comments on their Facebook page because they’re afraid of negative reviews. This is very short-sighted, as negative critics can give rise to some really good opportunities. You can make use of the comments as some form of input in order to improve your products and services. You can respond to critics and complaints promptly, and successfully position your business as one that “gets it”. Acknowledging a complaint and taking action online is a great way of demonstrating to other customers and prospects that take customer service very seriously.

Guest Author – Robert Bellarmine writes regularly for Visitask.com on the subject matter of project management.

The key to a successful small business is getting in touch with your customers in the most effective and direct way possible. Marketing messages sent via snail-mail can be effective but are slow and costly. Email is instantaneous but easily ignored, or worse, redirected to the junk folder. SMS marketing has the benefit of transmitting the message straight into your customers’ pockets, but can be logistically painful unless you have the right tools. That’s where services which enable you to send SMS to mobile phones via your computer come in.

Many businesses of all sizes are now utilising bulk text messaging to grab their customers’ attention. Unlike emails, which may remain unread for days, marketing messages delivered straight to a mobile phone are generally viewed as soon as they are received, or the next time the recipient picks up their handset. Due to the comparatively short length of SMS messages, such marketing may also be seen as less annoying than conventional channels, as they can be read in a matter of seconds.

SMS marketing is currently an under-used advertising avenue, but one that more small businesses are recognizing has great potential. Nightclubs are one example of an industry sector that has explored this potential effectively. By using online services which allow them to send texts to customers who have opted in (perhaps via an online form on the club’s website), they can notify them of upcoming events and drinks deals, with many even offering a discount when the text is shown at the door. This application is adaptable to suit other sectors including retail, B2B and B2C focused businesses.

If you need to keep your customers informed about upcoming promotions, events or product launches, then SMS marketing is a highly efficient way of doing so. Rather than commissioning an ad to appear in the local press at a significant cost or spending half a day working on a mail shot that may never be read by your target audience, you can simply type the marketing message out once on your computer and then send it instantly to customers you know will be interested.

Other Uses of PC to Phone SMS Messaging
Using bulk messaging as another arrow in your marketing quiver can help you to build a closer relationship with customers, and keep your services or products at the forefront of their mind. But being able to send SMS to mobile phones from your computer has more uses than just marketing communications. Examples of the functions it can fulfil include:

• Customer support – Deliver prompt and personalized customer support to your customers’ queries.
• Payment reminders – Letters can be easily put to one side, to be dealt with ‘later’, but texts carry with them certain urgency and can be sent out cheaply at specific intervals when an invoice is due.
• Email to SMS forwarding – Many online SMS services enable you to receive your emails on your mobile phone, so you can stay on top of things even when you’re not in the office.

Though they haven’t been around that long, mobile phones are now a vital part of most people’s lives. By using online services to send SMS to mobile phones, small businesses can tap into the marketing possibilities that mobile communications offer, and do so cost effectively and efficiently.

Anyone actively spending their advertising budget on digital marketing can tell you how important it is to continuously optimize your landing pages to deliver more qualified leads and sales. Testing creative ad copy in your Google search engine advertising (PPC) helps to improve your visitor clickthru rate, but if your page doesn’t convert that visitor into a lead once they reach there, you’ve just spent valuable ad dollars for nothing.

Google search engine advertising is a direct response form of advertising–you’re reaching a potential customer at the moment they are very interested in your product or ready to buy–versus a brand awareness medium like display (banner) advertising that builds preference over time. For that reason, it’s far more critical that your PPC landing page converts that motivated buyer into a captured qualified lead, often and fast. The only way to know if you’re yielding outstanding landing page performance is through testing.

A/B Testing is a highly effective form of testing landing pages for optimization. It’s easy too. Start by taking an existing landing page or design a new one, decide what component you want to test–for example, headline and copy–create a separate version, and run them against one another. A fantastic tool that I use for running landing page A/B tests is called Visual Website Optimizer. It’s simple to implement, highly intuitive and very affordable.

A typical A/B test using Visual Website Optimizer would be to have a Control landing page (existing version) versus a Variant landing page (new version). Visitor traffic to your landing page is then split in real-time 50/50 without the website visitor knowing it. For them, it’s a seamless experience. For you, it’s an automated process provided by the tool that begins giving you real-time data. Run it for some time, typically 4 weeks, and you’ll begin seeing if the Variant is outperforming the Control, by how much, and a prediction of how likely it will be pronounced the winner.

Incremental improvements to your landing pages can have a significant impact on the volume of leads you generate. Testing copy, graphics, colour, and page layout can each have an impact on your landing pages ability to convert better. Some tests may prove inconclusive, and that’s perfectly fine. But, only through continuous testing will you find improvements ranging from the marginal to dramatic. Testing also provides you with great insight on what your online visitors respond to, which can be further reflected in other areas of your marketing.

Building a community on Twitter is as much by choice as it is by chance. The people who follow you are likely a healthy mix of robots and people, hopefully more towards the latter. When you are tweeting and retweeting your own content on Twitter, there are social signals that show up in search results. If enough social signals are prevalent, Google decides that this content should show up in search (lucky you).

But it seems for Google to deem these social signals as relevant, there must be enough tweets and retweets of your content from authoritative users. According to Rand Fishkin, social signals are the number one more important social factor for search engine rankings. For Twitter, the search engine importance relies on the authority of your community, where Facebook relies on sheer number of shares. So building an authoritative network, or any network for that matter, is important. Here are some tips for cultivating that niche on Twitter.

Twitter Chats
Twitter chats are possibly the best way to engage people with authority. Half the battle is getting authoritative users to follow you; the other half is getting them to share your content. Go to Meryl.Net’s list of Twitter chats–this is a breathing document that is constantly updated. Simply enter your chat’s hashtag in the search and it will make live the chat. Also keep your eyes peeled for impromptu chats and similar hash tags because discussions always emerge around a popular subject.

Follow and @Mention Like Minded People
This is almost a no brainer for many Tweeps. If you see a member within Twitter who is sharing similar content, has a similar twitter follower/ following and appears on similar lists, chances are you guys will be perfect for each other. Create a partnership with like minded individuals, and mention them when you have an opinion about their content. Don’t hold back, develop a personality!

Be the First To Market
Being the first person to a space, a news story or an opinion can really get you at the top of the social sharing pyramid. Picture Twitter as a pyramid, where people like @jaybaer are disseminating thought leadership into a stream of tweeters and retweeters. If you are the first to market, you automatically start at a higher rung on the ladder. Leverage your blog to share opinions, and thoughts on topics that are emerging within your niche. Give value and research, make sure you emphasize your strengths in each blog post. If possible, make your blogger the same person who runs your social networks. This gives them the ability to interact, ask valuable questions and be the point-of-contact for your content.

The value of building an authoritative network on Twitter is there. You just need to be proactive and grab it. We all would love to think that people just naturally gravitate towards us. But the truth is, if we want to reap the benefits in social networking it takes time, patience and quiet persistence.

Image Credit: Hilton Pond

Guest Author – Matt Krautstrunk is a writer on topics ranging from social media marketing to telephone systems at Resource Nation, an online resource providing voip service tips for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

What does your “About Us” page actually say about your company? Is it a boring sales pitch for your small business?

What many businesses fail at is their “About Us” page, and one of the most common ways they fail is not taking a chance to expose their true colors. If your business just has an “About Us” page because everyone else does, then you probably should verse yourself in how to write remarkable “About Us” pages.

Opportunities for Your Business
This page holds a lot of opportunity for your small business. There are a wide variety of people who will check out your “About Us” page after landing on your home page. For instance, here at Resource Nation, about 6% of our traffic clicks on the “About Us” page from our home page. This gives you great opportunity to humanize your company to capture and excite the reader.

If a customer clicks on your “About Us,” they are expecting to read about the history of your company, what it offers, etc… However, if you take a different approach–exciting and captivating the visitor–your “About Us” page suddenly becomes a powerful marketing tool. This holds great potential to gain new customers, especially in industries known for bland and dry content.

In the business world, it is sometimes forgotten that people want to actually do business with people, not machines. A corporate façade doesn’t necessarily need to be withheld at all times. At the same time, it’s important to shy away from drafting your “About Us” like a sales pitch.

Don’t Write About What You Offer
Your first instinct will be, saying, “____ is a company that provides_____,” blah, blah, blah… stop. Think about how you will connect with your end user. Don’t paste your mission statement in to your “About Us” page.

Humanize Your Brand
What human elements bring your company to life? Are you a fun small business looking to inspire social change, or do you want to command respect with a Fortune 500 companies? Going the fun route is always a bit easier because you can humanize your brand quite easily. If you are looking to still maintain corporate respect, it may take a well-versed copywriter to get your page to connect on a personal level.

Here are some quick tips for your “About Us” page:

• Include links to exciting internal content, Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr accounts.
• Include pictures of people–the people who work within your offices.
• Convey emotion–simple to say, difficult to do.
• Give some causes that your company stands for.
• Tell a brief back story of a landmark with your company.

Whether you are looking to create a viral “About Us” page that can be shared on social media, or simply renovating your fossilized “About Us” page, make sure that you add a human touch. Simply pasting your mission statement is a cop-out and you should make sure everything associated with your brand, especially your “About Us” page conveys your business in the appropriate light.

Image Credit: The Gaming Liberty

Guest Author – Matt Krautstrunk is an expert writer on topics ranging from social media to office copiers at Resource Nation, an online resource assisting in digital copier purchase decisions for small businesses.