NYC Office Space & Entrepreneurs Stories
This is the first post in a series explaining how to optimize your website for maximum search engine exposure.Many small business owners struggle to receive traffic from the search engines due to the tremendous competition in most verticals. Let’s begin by evaluating the core fundamentals of search engine optimization.Basic web page structure includes a header tag called the “meta.” This area is where you specify to the search engines what your site is about. In years past, all you had to do to rank well for a search term was to stuff this tag with a lot of keywords that you wanted to be listed for. The problems with this primitive approach to search technology is pretty clear. Even if your site had absolutely nothing to do with what you indicated it did, you would still rank well for it because the search providers didn’t know any better. This lead to the first evolution of search technology.With the first major evolution, search providers would send what are known as “spiders” or “crawlers” to pages that existed on the web. Unlike in the past where these technologies were to read only the meta content of a page, they were now programed to actually read the text that was on the pages. This now meant that sites would rank well based on what the actual contents of their site was about instead of simply what they indicated their site was about. As you can imagine, this was a tremendous game changer for search engine optimization as a whole. Now, you would not only have to indicate what your site is about via the meta tag content, but also ensure that what was in that field was consistent with the text that was actually on your site. While this was a major improvement, it still had blatant flaws. People could still manipulate the content on their page and stuff it with irrelevant keywords to convince the search engines their site was about one thing, when in reality it was about a completely different topic.So the search engines proceeded to take their algorithm to the next level once again. If people couldn’t be trusted to be honest on their page about what their site was really about, how could sites be evaluated? The engines evolved their algorithm to now not only evaluate a site based on the content written on it, but also based on what other sites were linking to it. If prominent, authority sites are linking to a site, chances are it has some kind of authority. The algorithm is now programed to evaluate, not only the on page content for a site, but also who is linking to it and what types of phrases they are linking to it with. For example, you will notice in the header of this post there is a link that says “NY office space,” and links to the Sunshine Suites home page. This indicates to the search engines that the Sunshine Suites site is about NY office space. This principle is now applied all over the web with other sites, linking back to your main web property.In the continuation of this series, we’ll look at:
- How to find target keywords that you will have the most success ranking for.
- How to build quality links to your site, making the search engines see you as the authority that you are.
- How to develop authoritative content to make crystal clear to the search engines what you’re all about.
Are you a small business looking to sell products online? Maybe you already manage a brick and mortar presence to sell your goods and you would like to drive more sales online. Although setting up an ecommerce platform for the first time may seem intimidating, it doesn’t have to be difficult.
What are my options?There is no shortage of ecommerce platforms available on the web. The one that is right for you depends on your personal level of technical experience and how simple or complex a solution you really need. For example, some people will want to manage an ecommerce platform on their own web hosting account, while others would rather pay a premium for the ecommerce provider to manage the hosting for them. It’s all just a matter of personal preference.Just a friendly tip: try to avoid ecommerce providers that take a transaction fee on your sales. This is usually on top of a monthly fee. The only reason people normally pay these fees is when they aren’t aware that there are other options. Note, you still may have to pay a transaction fee to process credit cards, but do not settle for a fee of this nature just for an ecommerce platform.
Not tech savvy? Not a problem!One of the easiest ecommerce providers to use if you’re not exactly a tech geek is called
Ecwid. It’s flexible, powerful, and incredibly simple to use. One of the largest benefits of Ecwid is the multi-channel approach. For example, with just one backend you can manage your store on your site; sell through your Facebook page and also have a mobile store (for smartphones) up and running without any additional work on your part. It’s free for up to 100 products, and only $17 per month for up to 20,000. If you’ve never dealt with ecommerce before, this is a highly recommended option.
Solutions for the tech geeks:If you’re more tech savvy than most and are looking for more power, you have other options.
Magento Community Edition is one of the most popular online ecommerce platforms. This is because it offers a tremendous level of customization and power right out of the box. It’s hailed as one of the most powerful available. Since this edition is open source, it is completely free. This is great for people who understand how to dive right in and make changes that they want, but comes with a downside. When you are running on the Magento free platform, no support is included other than interfacing with other Magento users. That being said, if you do not have the tech skills to support yourself if an issue arises, this should be avoided.
Other Channels:Selling your goods on your site isn’t your only option. If you are looking to drive more sales, you should consider diversifying into other channels. These other channels consist of marketplaces that already have an audience and traffic who is already looking for what you are selling, you just have to post it up for them to find and purchase. Examples of these channels include
eBay and
Amazon. These channels WILL charge a transaction fee on each purchase because you are using their platform and tapping into their customer base to make your sale. Essentially, you will have to weigh if you can sell your products on a lower margin, once you factor in their fees, and still turn a profit.
Let’s face it; the online marketing industry is a booming one to be in. With just about everyone owning a computer and having internet access, the internet is becoming a popular tool for both sellers and consumers. The internet is a notorious tool for breaking down the traditional geographical barriers of the business world and has made it so small businesses can compete just as much as the larger ones. The one thing that brings those barriers down and gives small businesses a fighting chance against large corporations is the use of online marketing.
Investing in online marketing is something every business has to do in order to enhance their company image, increase their customer base and receive a return on their company investment in literally no time. The growing trend in companies hiring firms that conduct online marketing is on the rise, but so is the cost. With the growing popularity of online marketing services, these professionals can raise the rates and rake in the dollars. It is a win-win for both companies, right? Well that all depends on the overall outlook for the online marketing industry in general.
The New Trend
With online marketing paving the way to new online advertising trends, the use of text and image advertising is basically a thing of the past. Now companies are relying on things like rich text and media operations for their advertising campaigns rather than the use of billboards and print ads. Up-to-date technologies such as HTML, Java Script, and Adobe Flash are the new terms when it comes to advertising. It is the goal of online marketers to grasp the attention of online visitors of a particular site and even shape the way they think about it.
After a national survey conducted in December 2009 showed that over 74% of Americans utilize the internet on a daily basis and over 55% access that internet daily from the use of their smart phones. With this large trend, how does online marketing affect other industries?
Industry Effects
With so many consumers turning to the internet, other industries have to meet the demand as well. One industry for example would be banking. Once a face-to-face industry, banking has now become a virtual industry offering consumers online access and even the ability to open, close or transfer accounts from the comfort of a computer. Internet auctions and online retail stores have also become a popular snag into the internet world. With more consumers preferring to shop from the comfort of their own home and less in person, the online industry is teeming with retailers ready to take on the demand.
With these new industries meeting the demands of internet goers, online marketing has grown as well. These companies rely heavily on online marketing firms to bring their businesses to the top of Google searches and make them the most effective in a sea of similar companies.
Success at What Cost
Online marketing is a big industry and certainly not a free one. Though some companies attempt to conduct online marketing themselves, they quickly come to realize that it is more effective to hire an outside source. So what is the cost of doing such?
For a small business alone, they can be looking at costs such as:
$1,500 to $30,000 to create a web site, market that website, perform keyword research and create an effective domain.
$100 to $2,000 to host their site monthly, maintain their site and maintain Search Engine Optimization.
$100 to $1,000 in web site linking campaigns and article writing.
$100 to $400 per month in online advertising campaigns.
$100 to $500 in SEO directory submission.
These rates are expected to change drastically within the next year or so. With the demand for internet growing even further in popularity thanks to social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, online marketing firms are jumping into new waters and tackling more ground than ever before. Though currently a small business is looking at a final tab of $3,000 to over $38,000 for online marketing campaigns today, those numbers are expected to almost double within the next five years.
At the
WomenEntrepreneur blog, Sunshine Suites’ co-founder Cheni Yerushalmi has a huge, vital piece of advice for stay-at-home startups:
“When you’re in a home, your networking opportunities are limited,” Yerushalmi says. “How much feedback and advice will you get?”
Cheni gives WomenEntrepreneur some valuable insight into the Sunshine office community, its network of small businesses and entrepreneurs, and provides 6 tips for small businesses in 2011.
Read the entire article here! This is a continuation in our series about Social Media and Online marketing. Since we’ve covered the upsides of these new platforms, let’s look at their downsides.The Down SideThere is a down side to influence marketing. By placing your company information out there into social media networks, you run the risk of brand copiers taking up your company profile, creating their own and working on your behalf without your knowledge. Sites like Twitter are teeming with Twitter Pages that claim to be for famous actors, TV personalities and even companies, but unless the page has been verified and authorized, it is just another copy cat. That means that you can run the risk of your potential pool of customers following a copy rather than your actual company. To counteract this, companies need to have individuals monitoring these social media networks and picking out the copy cats to have their profiles removed.With that said, social media does put some security risks into play for larger corporations. This is why it is important for any company utilizing social media for their online marketing to ensure they have proper data protection and even an individual or team monitoring their database activity to ensure data breaches do not occur.Social media does not work for every company when it comes to influence marketing. Companies that set up their profiles solely to pitch sales, ignore customers that post on their walls or simply have their social site set up like their company website will get little to no attention from consumers. Those that use social media as a “social” profile to collaborate and be creative with their customers are ten times more likely to gain respect and attention from consumers. To do this, it is a full-time job and one that many companies will outsource to an individual or teams of individuals. When considering using social media for your company, do a little browsing of companies that are currently on sites like Facebook and Twitter first. Notice that those with high amounts of fans or followers are typically not pushing to sell anything, but simply create a “fan base”; which basically is today’s way of creating the word of mouth advertising. So remember what you want others to say about you before you put it out there to be said.The question becomes, do the upsides of this new technology outweigh the downsides? While this will vary by individual company, for the most part, the answer is yes. However, as long as you’re keeping on top of it chances are your company can benefit from it.In the new year, we’re going to be looking at how to go about developing a sound social strategy for your small business startup. The good news is, it’s probably not as hard as you think
.It’s been an AWESOME year. We look forward to putting out more exciting educational content for small businesses in the new year, so make sure you’re checking back often.
Ten years ago, barely anyone had ever heard of social media such as Facebook, Twitter or MySpace. Today, just about everyone has either a Twitter or Facebook account that they check on a regular basis. More so, sites like Facebook and Twitter are an obsession with many consumers. They will check what friends and even their favorite companies are up to directly from their smart phones and laptops and constantly update what they are doing right down to something as simple as drinking a cup of coffee. With this social media frenzy taking over, it is no wonder that online marketing would join up forces to become what is referred to in the industry as “Influence Marketing”.
Bringing Customers to You
Today there are over 62 million Facebook users. This is an online marketing executives dream. To have all of your potential customers or a large pool of potential customers at your fingertips, the possibilities are endless when it comes to marketing campaigns. With Facebook, things are even easier with the search tools provided by the site. Companies can do a direct search for their customer demographics. For example, if your company usually attracts customers that are male between the ages of 18 and 25, you can easily search on Facebook and bring up a list of millions of matching possibilities for you to advertise directly to.
Giving Your Company a Face
Companies are turning to the use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to give their company a realistic face. No longer are companies looked at as large money hungry corporations when they have real people leaving comments and Tweets about what is going on. Though the entire goal of social media is to showcase your company’s products or services, social media sites allow these companies to showcase it in a transparent way. That means that they can simply state they opened up their Facebook account to help consumers make better choices about what they are buying, but not sell anything to them directly. Without selling directly, companies can facilitate their value and consumers can feel less pressured.
Breaking Down Barriers
Before companies were limited to who they could socially be in the same circle with, but with social media sites companies can network and join forces with numerous companies around the country or even around the globe in order to bring them more business. Companies can reach consumers throughout the world instead of being limited to those directly around them. With the geographical barriers gone, the possibilities can be endless.
So you have an idea! Though inventors hit success everyday, taking an idea to the market is a lot more work than you would think. So how do all of those famous inventions hit the market and seem as though it was done with ease? Usually that is because the inventors are well-versed in the research of their product in the first place. If you have a new idea that you want to take to the market, then you will want to keep the following in the back of your mind:
How New Is Your Idea?
For just about any inventor, your ideas will come from your everyday life. Though this helps make an effective invention that everyone will use, it can also run the risk that your idea derives from similar products already on the market. To make matters worse, there are a lot of inventors that will patent their ideas, but never introduce them to the market. If there is already a patent in use, then your idea will not be very new to the market. To verify if your idea is unique or not, you will want to search through the seven million patents that have already been issued today in the United States.
To search the list of current patents and find out if your idea is something new, you can visit the United States Patent and Trademark Office. For those who do not have the time to sift through the millions of patents on the USPTO site, you can start your initial search by doing a Google Patent search. In order to complete this simply type in your keyword for your invention and seek out references that match your invention.
Though your patent search may turn up that your idea is new to the market, you will still want to follow up with a paid and professional patent service. The United Inventors Association of the USA will conduct a professional search on your behalf for $250 to $1,000. Though this seems like a hefty investment, it will cost a lot more to go about inventing your product only to find that you wasted money on an invention that already has a patent by another inventor.
When the Idea is Just That – An Idea
A lot of famous inventions were not actually manufactured by the inventor themselves. More often than not the inventor simply has an idea and has to go about hiring a professional service to create their idea for them and for their patents. Many inventors have found success by posting ads on freelance websites such as Guru, Elance or Freelancer to find an individual or firm willing to help their idea come alive. On these sites you can find freelance attorneys as well to handle all of the patent applications.
Before hiring any professional firm or individual, verify their credentials, ask for references and even check for any complaints filed against them with both the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission. If a company requests pre-payment prior to creating the goods, you may want to research the company for possible fraudulent charges.
Will My Product Sell?
Before you put all of your effort and money into an invention, question the market itself about whether or not your product is something they will buy. Conduct research or even poll people within your neighborhood and city to see if they are interested in your product. There is no point in creating a product that the average consumer will not be interested in.
Once you have the business idea and the financing, the planning phase of your start-up is far from over. Now you must focus on the physical location of your new business. There is a reason the phrase “location, location, location” is used often in the business world – a location is everything. Even if your company offers a unique service or product, if it is located in a hard to find location the chances are you will not get much attention. Getting customers through the door all falls on the shoulders of where your business is located to begin with. Here we discuss more:
Demographics
A business owner has the option of analyzing the area’s demographics and business trends prior to planting themselves in any particular area. There are professional services that can help a business analyze things like traffic patterns, lifestyle and demographic data within a city or state that they are thinking of relocating to. A business owner should also consider other businesses in the area. Are there any business generators such as grocery stores or other popular vendors? Is your location close to parks, schools or hospitals? Areas that have a high amount of foot and vehicle traffic are the best for a business looking to select a start-up location. Visit the Google Local Business Center to find businesses within an area you are considering and see how much traffic they may generate.
Competition
Though this may seem outrageous, a company will be better off locating their building next to their biggest competitor. A more established competitor will have selected a location that has great demographics for what they are offering; therefore you should follow suit. Most of these competitors spend their money advertising and marketing themselves to draw traffic near, which is what your smaller start-up can gain from — when visitors head toward your competitor, your business will be there to catch their eye as well. It should be noted that this tactic will only work if you know just what your competitor has and you are able to outsell them. Even if your competitors are thriving within an area, you will still want to consider the overall location. Many competitors can be located in poor areas that will not be friendly for a start-up, while others are located in thriving ones. To find a list of your local competitors and who is located around them, try services such as Google Maps or Yellow Pages.
Professional Assistance
Even though you can do some of the footwork on your own, you may want to consider hiring a professional to do the research, property search and look over the endless amount of wording in a commercial lease. A good lawyer can negotiate lease terms to your liking and explain everything in that lease in terms you can actually understand. Interviewing the location does not end with looking at the location; you have to interview the owner as well. This is why a professional realtor can be of assistance. They will know just what questions to ask and find only the properties that suit your physical needs and demographics to begin with.
By: Russ | Published: December 20, 2010 | Filed under: Around Sunshine, Events
The
Sunshine NY office community of small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs is thrilled to announce, in partnership with Baruch College and the NYCEDC,
AROUND SUNSHINE: Sunshine’s calendar of entrepreneurial events, webinars, and classes.
These events are open to everyone, and we at Sunshine couldn’t be more proud of utilizing our network to continue to build an infrastructure of ideas!
Sunshine Suites — New York Office Space
As a small business owner or entrepreneur looking to start a small business, there is a lot of work that goes into starting it, but even more in maintaining it. The success or failure rate of most businesses lies heavily on the owner’s knowledge of why they are starting their business and how hey intend to maintain it. If you are going to start up a small business or you already have one running, these key steps should be considered as a checklist of items every business should have to follow that path of creating a strong business.
It’s Not About What You Want
Sure the items you want to sell are your passion, but are they things that a consumer will want to buy? More often than not many small businesses will start up with the assumption that if they love what they are selling, others will too. This is a harsh reality to face, but the business is not about you – it is about the people that have to buy your product or service in order for you to stay in business. Ask yourself if what you are selling appeals to other people and not just yourself. Do a quick Google search to find out if others are selling products like yours and research how their business is actually doing. To compare businesses directly visit the Google Local Business Center.
Cash Flow
For any business, cash flow is considered the heart of the company. Cash flow helps create profits; therefore business owners need to find ways to increase it. So how do you create more cash flow? If you own a retail company you can charge extra for high-price items or even charge for a specific delivery date. In the event your business is service related you can require deposits for upfront work and the balance due at the end of service.
Keeping Costs Low
If your company does not have positive cash flow, then it does not matter how much cash flow they have in general. This is why every business needs to bring in more cash than they spend. To do this a business needs to find ways to keep their costs low, but their prices high enough that the medium is profit. One way to do that is to try paying vendors upfront rather than using credit. By doing so they are more apt to negotiate lower prices than those that purchase on credit only.
Overestimate/Underestimate
Though it is a good quality to be positive, a business owner needs to try to think the bottom line in all situations. When estimating things such as your expenses, always overestimate the amount you will pay. Same will go for your revenue, except this time underestimate it. When you are conservative with your numbers that can mean your budget will be padded enough for the unexpected.
Sales and Marketing
A business will not make it if they do not have sales and to bring sales a business needs to use marketing. Marketing can be done by placing
advertisements on sites such as Craigslist or even utilizing social networking sites such asTwitter, Facebook or Myspace. The focus needs to be getting your company name out there rather than just hoping a consumer will
walk in and buy up your products.
Test and Change Everything
A business is all about evolving. If a particular product or service is not selling, change up the advertisements or marketing directive. If after
several changes it is still not selling, now is the time to rethink the overall idea. Ask yourself why it is not selling and consider that you might be
selling something you want, but what consumers do not.
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