Top Laws of Green Marketing

September 7th, 2012

With the changing times, everyone wants to create and establish sustainable businesses than ever before. Green has become the mainstream as now consumers can comprehend issues that impact their lives and therefore want to take corrective measures to embrace sustainability effectively. Promoting content marketing strategies that focus on green marketing effectiveness can help people choose products and services that are environment friendly. As marketing and consumerism standards become more clear and defined, businesses need to innovate towards sustainable business ideas and concepts that eventually become way of life. Like any marketing rules, green marketing follows some rules and laws that every entrepreneur should be aware of. Here are some top laws listed for you.

1. Transparency and honesty

Honesty is the best policy and one should focus on transparency and lucidity as a thumb rule for green marketing. Do not show your consumers rosy picture or commit something that might not exist in future. Consumers will also respect a businessman who is fair and honest in business dealings. False promises do not take a marketer towards a road to success rather will lead you to a road of defame. Offer the consumer information on the environmental impacts of your service offerings, whether positive or negative.

2. Know your consumer

You should always have a clear picture in your mind of what your selling and who would be your potential audience. Know you customer needs and offer your products and services accordingly rather than promoting your products and services to an unidentified clientele. Understand customer preferences. Try to know the challenges that your clients might face and help your clients overcome them. Do not over sell or hard sell at any stage.

3. Measure your success consistently and focus on two way communication

Devise some practical techniques to measure your success. Know your audience and value your customers. Create metrics that can focus on sustainability indicators. This will help you to forsee your future expected growth and also help you grow towards green certifications and standards. Various certifications like GRI, ISO and more are the ones that you should aim for your organization. Focus on various green initiatives and environment friendly options like reduction in power usage or using recycled printing paper and more. Encourage your employees for greener and environment friendly options. Strive for a two way communication. Always try to foster a two way communication with your clients and encourage them to share their complaints and suggestions.

Conclusion

Content marketing is the key to success for every online business. Green marketing is a marketing strategy that can actually help the budding entrepreneurs to understand the business dynamics via online marketing. Always provide information about the product or service being ‘green’ to give an option to the consumer to buy it or not. However as of now there is no surety that a consumer may pay extra for a green product.

About The Author: Margaret is a writer/blogger. She loves writing, travelling and blogging.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Guest Post, small business | 2 Comments »

Small Business Ideas With No Financial Investment

August 15th, 2012

It has become natural that for launching any kind of business you need to invest a small amount of money, which depends upon the kind of field you’re going into. Do you want to increase your income by starting a small scale business? You don’t want to invest any money in starting up the business? Then here are some solutions listed below for your small business start-up ideas where you can earn profits without investing any cash in the business. The different small business ideas that can be turned into reality are:

  • Start earning online: Blogging, link building, freelancing and selling goods are different kinds of jobs that can earn you money online. This is one of the easiest ways that doesn’t need any capital to be invested in the process. You can directly start earning money with your deeds.Online Income
  • Establish a consultation: There may be some hidden talents in each one; it is time for you to notice them and bring them out. You can cash your talent within a very short span of time where you can establish a consultation where you provide necessary advices in the field that you expertise in. This is also known as expertise selling where you share your ideas for some amount.
  • Content writing: As there is an increase in the demand of content writers that produce quality content that is genuine and copyscape protected, you can take an advantage of it. Even in this instance you don’t need any initial amount where you can start off with your service as early as possible and get paid as per your talent.
  • Freelancing: You can start free lancing that includes music, journalism, screenwriting, editing, web designing, graphic designing, consulting and translating, where you are self-employed and there is no boss above you. You may require the client to sign written contracts or sometimes perform on verbal agreements. The pay for freelancing is high compared to other services.
  • Travel agency: This is the best option for the people who are mostly interested in travelling to different places, so that they can guide others with their experiences regarding the travelling options. You can have a franchise with a travel company and start offering exciting packages that tempt people. Even this earns you a good amount of money as there will be many people in the list who want to travel and explore many places.
  • Organising services: This is one of the interesting businesses that one can opt for. You can offer services such as organising parties, marriages and different occasions. This service is in huge demand at present as many people want to have things organised to reduce their burden and perform the ceremony free from stress.

However there may be some jobs that need a small initial amount to be invested in starting it. In such situations you can secure payday loans rather than a traditional loan that offer a short repayment period and instant approval with no credit check.

Author’s Bio

My name is Michelle. I am a tech writer from UK. I am into Finance. Catch me @financeport

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Entrepreneur, Guest Post, small business | 7 Comments »

3 Easy Steps to Make Money Blogging

May 17th, 2012

Make a great living online by following these simple steps

Thousands of people around the world enjoy blogging, and most think of it as a small hobby that they couldn’t hope to live on; but it’s surprisingly easy to turn your blog into a modest, successful small business. There are already plenty of blogs that discuss Google Ads and affiliate marketing, so we’ll focus on how to make your monetization strategy (whichever you choose) more profitable. There are no “dirty tricks” here—these are all tips to make a blog that is both useful to your readers and attractive to legitimate advertisers.

1. Find a niche

For your blog to attract the attention of users, advertisers, and search engines, you need to select a theme; ideally, one that isn’t already populated with big-time sites. For instance, if you want to start a generic cooking blog, you’ll be competing with thousands of others, including giants like Betty Crocker and The Food Network, and your blog will never get past the twilight zone of page 8 on Google. If you select some specific, underserved niche, however, you’ve got a shot at reaching people.

Before you nail down your blog’s theme, do a bit of Googling on the topic. Check to see how many people are searching for key words related to that topic, and what pops up on Google’s front page. If very few people are searching for that specific niche, you’ll struggle to bring in traffic; but if the key words are bringing in a healthy amount of searches, and you’re competing with other small personal blogs, you’ve got a good shot at topping the Google rankings and becoming an important source of information on that topic.

2. Create user-friendly content

This is more than just “writing well”, although that is important (and could be a blog post all to itself). People read online content differently than they read books and magazines, so you need to modify how you write to suit an online audience. Follow these tips:

  • Break up your content: Reading long blocks of uninterrupted text is harder online than it is in print, so you need to separate your content. Select the best funny videos or images related to your topic and use them to chop up your content into smaller, easy-to-read pieces.
  • Numbered Lists: You’ve probably seen a lot of “Top 10” lists on the web recently, and that’s because it really does draw more traffic than content posted in other formats. Numbered lists provide an easy way to organize and simplify your content so that busy readers know what they’re getting into before they click
  • Keep it brief: With few exceptions, most online readers lose interest after about 1000 words, so if your post is longer than that, you might consider a more focused topic, or breaking up your post into installments.

3. Get Connected!

This is by far the most important way to start pulling traffic and getting money from your advertisements. Find successful bloggers (or better yet, a blog network) that is related to your niche, and offer to guest post on their sites.  Don’t be afraid to submit high-quality content in guest posts; you might feel like you’re sacrificing good work, but it’s a small price to pay for the awareness it will create for you and your blog. At the bottom of each guest post, most bloggers will allow you to include a link to your blog; and that’s how you’ll bring in users and start earning real ad revenue.

As you cultivate relationships and continue creating trustworthy, quality content, other bloggers will begin linking to your site on their blogs, increasing traffic directly and improving your Google ranking. Keep expanding your network, reaching out to more and more blogs and establishing connections. It’s this growing network that will draw in ever-increasing traffic to read your posts, click your ads, and bring in revenue.

About the Author: Tiffany Ganttis a staff writer for ApronAddicts.com, a website dedicated to the love of cooking and looking good while you do it! You can often find her getting creative in the kitchen as she whips up something yummy in one of her flirty, color coordinated aprons.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Blogging, Entrepreneur, Guest Post, small business | 6 Comments »

How To Improve Your Small Business

May 14th, 2012

The success of your small business depends on flexibility, good planning, and solid organizational skills.  Too many small business owners think that they can just open their doors and experience success.  It’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day details and forget to set your sights on the long-term, but it’s important that you don’t forget.

Improving productivity and profit

One of the most important things to remember in running an efficient business is to ensure that your company provides a quality service or product at a fair price.  In other words, don’t charge exorbitant fees just to make a buck.  Your customers know you need to make a profit, but a fair price with excellent customer service goes a really long way.  Here are some ways to improve productivity and profit overall.

  1. Get online.  You’ll be hard-pressed to find a company that doesn’t already have an Internet presence.  Getting online allows customers easy access to your business 24-hours a day, seven days a week.
  2. Maximize networking.  Participate in business organizations to make connections.  This may even open the doors to potential partnerships, investment opportunities, and growth.
  3. Join forces.  Working with complementary businesses can be a real win-win situation.  Drive traffic to each other’s sites; engage in link and ad swaps, and work together to promote each other.  It’s effective and cost-efficient. 

Ensure smooth running

Do you know what the first step in having an efficient business is?  It’s to hire good employees.  You should be able to depend on your employees – they should know what they’re doing, what your product or service is, and be a good reflection on you.  Here are some things to help keep your business running smoothly:

  1. The atmosphere.  The atmosphere at work has a big impact on how smoothly your business operates.  Make sure that the workspace is clean and welcoming.  A friendly yet professional feel can go a long way for both your customers and staff.
  2. Continual training.  The direction of your business can definitely shift over time.  That means your staff’s tasks can as well.  It’s a good idea to engage in periodic training to make sure everyone is on the same page.
  3. Keep updated records.  Make sure you document everything.  That means if you run a promotion, note it.  If you make updates to your website, document it.  Keep your files up to date.

Hire an Umbrella Company

There is no doubt about it, as a business owner you will typically have more responsibilities than you have time.  Running a small business takes a lot: marketing, human resources, advertising, management, and so forth.  So, what can you do to make the most of your time and resources?  Many small businesses actually hire umbrella companies.  An umbrella company can provide a number of benefits and services including, but not limited to:

  • Finance management
  • Accounts receivable and accounts payable services
  • Human resource management
  • Payroll services
  • Private medical coverage and additional insurance
  • Marketing and advertising services
  • Business connections

Using an Umbrella Company can free up valuable time, and allow you to concentrate on making your business a successful venture. Do not expect all your problems to be instantly solved once your business is up and running; owning your own business is time-consuming and involves lots of hard work.  Ensure you employ reliable staff, and take advantage of all business opportunities offered to you. With the right time and dedication your business is sure to be a success.

About the author: Katie G. enjoys writing articles on business related topics especially small businesses.

Posted in Guest Post, small business | 4 Comments »

See How Your Website Appears To Visitors

May 7th, 2012

I get easily blown away any time i discover what features or tools you can use to optimize a website.

There is a tool i just found out and it was created by a Google engineer. Google engineers are given opportunities to personally pursue projects as per ideas they conceived. It was during this moment of opportunity that this Google engineer created this feature.

This tool is the browser size tool

The feature helps to discover generally how much of your website is easily visible to readers. Websites appear differently to readers because of the sizes of their monitor screens, the browsers, the toolbars installed and so on. Thus some very important part of your website might not be easily visible to some readers unless they scroll down or sideways the page. Believe me some visitors do not bother to scroll through your page.

This I find very useful to website owners; especially if you have adverts or donate button positioned in places on your website. After checking out your website with this tool, you might want to reposition that advert so that it can be easily seen and clicked by visitors. Isn’t this a lovely revelation?

But you interested in how I found this out?

I made a call to a friend asking him to check out my website and make a comment on the design. He reported back to me that my website was okay but that it had just 2 Google adverts by Google and suggested I should include a last one allowable by Google. I replied that i had all 3 ads on the site. He checked again but this time he had to scroll the page before he could see the website. I immediately noticed and recognized this problem and jumped into the Google search engine to search for how I can correct this issue.

But then I decided to find out first how my website does look like to readers and boom………I bumped into this wonderful tool.

Whenever you are at the newspaper stand, you will see the front page headlines at the top of the newspapers before anything else. You won’t see the bottom headlines of some newspapers because it is folded. This is why adverts placed at the top of newspapers are more expensive than their counterparts placed below. This is also the same concept of how a website appears to the visitors at first sight.

So go check up your blog or website now and see if there are things that are hidden but you need to be visible on first look. Go to www.browsersize.googlelabs.com. Once you get there, type in your website url and you have a view of what we are talking about here.

About the author: Jide is an internet publisher. He publishes in hubpages and he also publishes jobs in jobnetworknigeria, a job platform where job searchers finds new jobs in Nigeria.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Blogging, Guest Post, Wordpress | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »