If you want your business to grow with technology then you are on the right track to saving time and money.  In addition to saving money, bringing in more of it is a laudable goal that can be achieved by incorporating some emerging technology.  Here are five new technologies that your business should taking advantage of.

Software as a Service (SaaS) - Installing and upgrading software on your computer is a never ending and time consuming task.  Companies like Google are chipping away at this problem with great speed.  Google Business Applications is a prime example of how a business can incorporate email, calendars, document sharing, corporate instant messaging contacts, and more without having to have an expensive Exchange Server with licensing fees and an IT staff to maintain it.  Check this out at http://www.google.com/a.

Video Conferencing - Although Cisco's Tele Presence is too expensive for many small businesses, there are video conferencing solutions to consider that are a lot cheaper but feature rich. With a simple web cam and a service like GoToMeeting.com you can host unlimited online meetings with up to 15 attendees per meeting for a flat monthly fee between $40 and $50. Being able to connect with customers, prospects, vendors or employees "face to face" via video is often better than simply email, telephone or instant messaging. Plane tickets, hotels, and car rentals are expensive and waste valuable time, but video conferencing is quite a bit less. Of course, a simple web cam and some instant messaging software will serve perfectly for free one on one meetings.  In addition to conferencing with your employees and customers, sites like Lynda.com keep you and your people up to speed with up-to-date training by offering classes online.

Video Production - As more companies produce low cost and quality tools for video production and sharing of those videos (such as YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo and Blip.tv) businesses can use video as a powerful sales & marketing tool. Internet users are drawn to video more and more these days as faster internet speeds and wireless networks grow more capable of delivering decent quality videos with faster load times and better resolution.  Take advantage of this technology to bring potential customers closer to your product and services than with just words and pictures alone.

Online Presence - Whether small businesses need a web site or not is a no-brainer. Your business, no matter what it is, MUST be on the web.  Just as one would expect to find your phone number in the phone book, people expect to be able to learn all about your business and what you offer on the web.  While the overwhelming majority of people do not possess the skills necessary to design and program a website to meet expectations of the web audience, there are plenty of professional web design firms out there to help you out.  This is one area that you shouldn't be looking to get the cheapest deal you can find however, you shouldn't have to break the bank to get what you truly need.  Be careful with companies that are trying to stack on plenty of add-ons you probably don't need.  Go with a firm that offers everything for a set price and will support you year round.  If done right, your return on a website will be way more than what you pay for it.

Social Media - Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace offer more opportunity for people than just bragging about the big fish you caught this weekend.  It is an opportunity to expose your business to where millions of people hang out every day.  Developing relationships online can translate into better relationships at your location.  It's much easier to generate buzz about your products and services with lots of "friends" linking back to your profiles.  Standing out and marketing a business using social media takes work.  This is not a "set it and forget it" type product.  You have to keep it up to date and fresh.  It's a great place to offer specials and coupons that people can't get anywhere else.  For the small business that gets that, you will have a loyal following and reach a wider audience than you could have with any other form of media.

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.

It is claimed that a customer tells you and others an average of three people about a product or service he/she likes, and eleven people about a product or service which he/she did not like. Viral marketing is based on this natural human behavior.

The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential and create Viral Messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being passed along.

The term "viral marketing" is also sometimes used pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaigns to create the impression of spontaneous word of mouth enthusiasm.

Why does Viral Marketing Work?

Consumers trust their network of friends and the larger consumer community. In an age of overabundant direct marketing and advertising techniques viral marketing, when done correctly, can have a subconscious effect on advertising your message.

Four Simple Rules to Follow

1. Free

This must be one of the most compelling words in the English language. Offer something for free and they are bound to listen.

2. Easily transferable

With the power of the internet, you have to make it easy for users to pass on. A viral email or website is a perfect medium for your message.

3. Uses preexisting social networks

myspace, youtube, craigslist, blogspot, facebook, etc.
These are all fantastic examples of a stage that you can shout your message from. There are millions of people that visit these websites every day. By putting your information and videos here it can boost your traffic to your own website and business from people that would not have otherwise received your message.

4. Doesn't tax your resources

Viral marketing is only one small part of your entire advertising and marketing campaign. Don't put all of your efforts into just one type of campaign. You must remember to be well rounded as a business owner to have the maximum effectiveness for your business.

Know Thy Customers

Tailor the medium to your audience so they're inspired to pass it on. For example, if you are targeting tween age girls - offering cute little glitter graphics that they can display on their myspace page for free - off of your website is a great promotion. However, if your target market is males ages 35 - 45 in the business world - this may not be the right approach.

Focus on Good Content

Craft interesting content so users are compelled to pass it on. If you are a florist - think of offering video classes on several topics - How to create the perfect arrangement, What is the right type of flower to give for the right person or occasion, What makes an interesting business gift? and so on.. You are directly pushing your products - but you are doing it in an informational way that is teaching your customers, not selling them. They will remember you when they need to buy a bouquet because you helped them and taught them valuable information.

Be Unique and Authentic by inviting dialogue and interaction while incorporating the brand. Marry Information and Entertainment by delivering both comedy and useful information. If you can make your customers laugh while pitching your product, they are more likely to pass it on to their friends.

Keep it Current

Position your business as releveant and savvy in the minds of your consumers. Use current events as a jumping off point for topics. High gas prices affect all of us - if your free offer that we mentioned earlier involves a gas card that they could win, this automatically makes you current to social needs.

Involve your Customers

Tap into the power of user-made ads. Consider running a contest that invites customers to submit relevant videos to your website and run a poll online to find the winner.

Partner with other Businesses

Partnering with businesses that offer complementary products and services. Offer them links to their websites off of yours in exchange for the same. Additionally, offer them an incentive to bring you customer leads.

Don't Forget to Publicize

Plug your viral campaign on printed marketing material. Postcards are an inexpensive way to do this - you can hand them out or mail them.

Be Patient

Follow these guidelines and remain persistent. One campaign may not be enough to gain you hundreds of new customers. You have to be continually thinking of new ways to market and advertise your business.

How to Create Buzz Offline

If you are not ready to utilize the online social community to boost your business or you would just like some additonal ideas to incorporate, here are a few ideas that you can utilize to create a similar type of buzz offline.

1. Refer a Friend Campaign Postcards

Offer a discount to current customers for referring their friends to you or a free gift.

2. Use the back of your business cards

Use the back of your cards to pass along some wisdom and advice to whomever you pass your cards out to.

3. T-shirt Campaign

If you attend expos or other events, offer a chance at winning a prize to people who wear your t-shirt at the event. This gets your marketing message all over the event very quickly and makes people happy at the chance to win something nice.

4. CD/DVD Brochure

If you do spend the time to create your viral marketing video, ebook, etc. - why not make it into something that you can hand out to people that you meet every day? Recordable CD's are so inexpensive these days and can contain quite a bit of information. You can have one professionally made for you to really impress a potential customer the second that they pop it in their computer. It can link to your own website and all of the information that you have to offer them.

Success

Viral marketing can boost your visibility and attract customers. Like any other form of advertising and marketing, it will take time, diligence, and patience. With your hard work, though, you will be rewarded with more customers.

For more information about this article, please contact:

Erica Haferkamp
Sagentic Web Design
6 E. Chambers St.
Cleburne, Texas 76031
(817) 645-6425
moc.citnegas@selas
http://www.sagentic.com

There are two main methods of getting the word out to potential customers: advertising and publicity. In this article, I will be focusing on the latter, specifically the writing and distribution of press releases.

Why, you ask yourself will a press release help my little business in a small town, help to sell my product any faster, gain new potential customers - or any of a million other reasons you could convince yourself it is not worthwhile to spend your time on this? Well, here are a few reasons why it could be very, very important to your business and your web site:

1. Organic Search Engine Optimization: With new search engine rules that Google has recently put into place, they have been showing press releases in organic search results. If your press release is well optimized to include key words and phrases that you wish to be found for, it can rank highly for two to three days in Google organic results. This is fantastic considering by old standards it usually would take up to six months to achieve any measurable search results in Google or other search engines. The press release can also get a great deal of traffic from other news aggregator web sites. This means higher rankings and more traffic to your web site which equals into more potential customers for you.

2. Link Building: You can use important keywords and relevant text in your press releases and link them to relevant pages on your web site. When the press release is distributed, these links will be picked up by distribution news sites displaying them and the links to your web site on theirs. These links will build your credibility with search engines and raise your rankings.

3. Reputation Building: The more press releases that you have published on the web equals to the opportunity you may have to be picked up by print publications such as magazines, newspapers, and professional journals for an interview or a request to write a story about your industry. Being published will elevate your industry status to that of an expert. You know your business better than anyone else does, right? If everyone else feels strongly about your expertise, they will be more likely to bring their business to the expert than they will your competitors.

4. Bloggers and RSS feeds: Many bloggers and Internet users subscribe to online release distributions services like PRWeb and RSS feeds. If your press release has keywords that they subscribe to and interests them, they might blog about you and give a link to your press release or your web site. If you consistently reach out to bloggers in this manner, you can get quite a few links, traffic, and sales from them.

5. Traditional Media: If your press release is interesting to journalists that find it, they will follow up with you, possibly interview you, and write a story about your business. Print journalists that I have already mentioned follow press releases, but many television and radio journalists also pick press releases that interest them to cover in stories. If this happens, it will most certainly lead to a short term boost in your web site traffic and sales leads.

Understanding the Basics

Before you begin to jump into the fire of this exciting world of press releases, it is important to understand a few of the ground rules. Some wire services are free, but others charge you by blocks of 375 or 400 words. This includes the title, summary, body, and contact information. If the release is over the limit of words, you will be charged extra per 100 words. With paid services, images, video, documents, and podcasts can be extra charges as well.

With paid releases, you might also be able to save money by choosing your distribution parameters. There are five major categories of releases: National, Regional, State and Local, and International. In addition to these major categories, some wire services also target Hispanic, African-American, and North American Chinese media outlets. Keep in mind that you should draft and submit your press release a few days in advance of any promotion that you may be considering due to the time it takes for some services to get confirmation before distribution.

Tips for Writing a Killer Press Release

1. Be Unique: Don't just write a bland announcement of your new product. You will most likely be ignored and discarded quickly. Make your press release have meaning by giving your product a value by focusing on the attributes that will make your future customers lives easier or better somehow.

2. Be Natural: Don't speak as if you were in a cheesy low budget commercial. Think of how you would share information about what you do or sell to a friend or family member with sincere integrity and honesty. Jargon based sales pitches will not work for you - stick to clearly defined facts.

3. Create an Online Press Room on your web site: Since in most cases you are limited to a word count in your press release, fill this section of your web site with the full version of the articles and related details. Also, make it easy for journalists to want to publish you by displaying all of your contact information, a high resolution company logo in various file formats, and possibly even a PDF media kit or brochure that really shows off what you can do and just begs them to cover you.

4. Create Google and Yahoo alerts: This will help you see the fruits of your labor. When you see all of the different web sites that are covering your press release you will get really excited about the effort that you have put forth.

Decide on Which Services that You Will Use

Here are a few different wire services and example costs that will help you get started on your warpath to success:
Free Distribution

1. PR.com
2. openPR.com
3. PRLog.com

Paid Distribution Services

1. PR Newswire
A 400 word national release can cost $680 and $185 for an additional 100 words. A 400 word release with a photo can cost $1325. Regional distribution will cost less. National releases include SEO, but it is extra for regional and other options.

2. Business Wire
Business Wire costs 8 - 10 percent less than PR Newswire.

3. Marketwire
A 400 word national release on Marketwire costs $460 with $150 extra for an additional 100 words. Additional photos cost $50. SEO costs $75. Audio and video links cost $75 each. It is also less for regional distribution

4. PRWeb
PRWeb is an e-mail based release service. A basic release is $80 each. SEO visibility starts at $200. A podcast interview costs $100.

Overall, there are quite literally hundreds of different methods that you can use to promote your web site and business. Press releases are just one way, but it is a great place to start.

Erica Haferkamp is the founder and president of Sagentic - a creative advertising, marketing, and web development agency located in downtown Cleburne, Texas.
She can be reached for questions and comments at:
moc.citnegas@acire or (817) 645-6425
or toll free 1-888-WEB-6425
http://www.sagentic.com

Many of you remember in 1989 when Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) is working in his cornfield near dusk. He hears a voice whisper, "If you build it, he will come." No one else can hear it. The next time he hears the voice, he has a brief vision of a baseball field in the middle of his cornfield, and Shoeless Joe standing in the field. The movie was Field of Dreams. Unfortunately, the world does not seem to work that way. I have heard this mistaken sentiment over and over again until it becomes frightening. I am afraid that the magical world of the internet has made people believe things that just won't happen. If I build a website for you, they might come. What am I saying? This is sure to hurt business right? Not exactly - I am a firm believer that not everyone is suited for the world wide web just yet. Some people will never get it while others just need a little push in the right direction.

Here's your push.... Remember when you opened your business? Sure you do. There was a ton of things that needed to be done. Most likely, one of the first things you obtained was a phone line. With that came a phone number. The day the telephone man arrived was a grand day for you. He promised to be there between 8am and 8pm and he kept his word! He did some magic and ta-da - you have a way for the customers to start communicating with you! I'll bet the you waited around all day waiting for the phone to ring and it didn't ring, right? No? Well, how did people know to call you or even what number to call? Ah, must have been that entry in the phone book or the friendly voice on 411. Most likely, if you were at all successful, you had advertised the number and name of your business in as many places as possible. Signs, banners, flyers, phone book ads, magazine ads, newspaper ads, maybe even TV and Radio. But one things is for sure, out of the billions of phone numbers out there, you needed yours to reach your customer base. Folks, you aren't going to believe this when I tell you, but the WEB IS EXACTLY THE SAME CONCEPT! You can't just get a domain name and a pretty website and then expect people to come flocking to it by the thousands. You have to ADVERTISE.

"But your company said you would get us in the search engines"

Yes, I know we said that. And we do. You are there in the search engines. You will improve your ranking over time and by ADVERTISING YOUR WEBSITE. How exactly to do this is another conversation entirely, but one we will have at one point if you are a Sagentic customer.

But just like your phone number, you have to tell everyone you have a website. They won't just automatically know about it. Think of the search engines as a phone book. Sure, they will give a listing for free but, is a plain listing good enough? Do you think you might get lost among all those other listings? Maybe you need to stand out among the crowd some how.

Getting your website through us is only the BEGINNING. You must advertise! I assure you it works! We have a large amount of customers that will spend moderate to heavy on advertising. ( I can attest to that since we are a full service advertising firm that handles all of their advertising). They either experience a great amount of growth in business or maintain the comfort level. They know exactly how much to advertise to moderate and control growth. Why? Because we tell them, for one, but also because they have been doing it for a long time. They have achieved proven and desired results.

There are a lot of myths about what a website will do for you, but in a nutshell it won't do anything for you if you don't market and promote it. Being in the search engines helps, but it is not the only thing that needs to be done. We design your website to be very search engine friendly, we submit to all major search engines, and we make sure you doing the right things with your content to help you achieve better ranking. Take Google for example. Have you taken the time to read My site's ranking in Google? This may help you understand how search engines work and maybe you'll believe me when I say you must not depend solely on search engine traffic for your business.

One former client of ours was very disappointed when there were very few online sales generated from their website. We had them listed very high in the search engines for their industry and their website traffic was very nice for a first year website. I was actually impressed with what we had achieved for them. But still, no sales. Why? My belief is because they refused to advertise. Absolutely refused. Being found in a search engine is not advertising. How many times have you came across a website and backed out because it wasn't what you were looking for?

Let's say you sell portraits of sunsets. You are number 1 in the search engines when someone types in "sunset pictures". You are getting thousands of visitors per day but little to know sales. Why? Because you are attracting the wrong people. These are people wanting to view pictures of sunsets on the internet. Now, a few of them may like one of your sunsets enough to make an impulse buy, but this accounts for very little of your traffic. Advertise to your market. Not just everyone who surfs the internet, but people who are looking to actually buy from you.

We wound up losing this client because we could not convince them that they need to advertise. I was not disappointed. After a few weeks, they found another "web design company". This "company" (operated out of a basement somewhere in the northeast) designed another website for our former client and made a load of promises I'm sure they can't keep. The design was horrible, but they had a working website. Now, the sales should start rolling in, right? Probably not. I received a phone call from them a few months later complaining that the website we had done for them shows up higher in the search engines than their new one. Not much I can do about that - that's what you paid us to do. Of course, the site we did for them is no longer there and that will certainly disenfranchise customers, however, we can't control the search engines like that. You won't advertise and your "new website" won't show up in the search engines. Go figure.

There are many ways to advertise your website - online and offline. We can help in both areas, so don't be afraid to give us a call and ask us how you could be doing better.

As I traveled to Michigan this past Thanksgiving, I couldn't help but notice one thing in particular. Airtran.com. It was everywhere. At the terminals. On the wings. On the plane's body. On the gates. On the baggage equipment. On the tow trucks. On the power units. On the baggage. On the uniforms. This is a company that apparently wants you to visit it's web site. Search Engine Optimization can only take you so far - it's imperative that you use other methods to get the word out about you domain name.

At the start of my 10 years in the Marine Corps, I noticed something right off - we plastered our emblem everywhere. No wonder it is very recognizable by civilians. ALL successful companies do it. It's called branding. Are you recognizable to anyone besides your family and friends? There's only so much money you can make there.

Call us about printed advertising, signs, banners, stickers, or pay-per-click advertising for your website. Especially if you are running an e-commerce website. A good pay-per-click advertising campaign can do wonders for getting traffic to your website really quick. Printed materials give customers something to walk away with and ponder - even it doesn't turn into a sale immediately. That person may refer you the next time they're asked if they know anyone that offers the services you offer. That's called "word-of-mouth" and it's the best advertising a company can hope for.