Igniting Business Blog

Content marketing offers tremendous opportunities for getting your message in front of potential customers.  However, when done poorly or inadequately, content marketing can result in nothing more than wasted time. Here are four common mistakes that can torpedo a small business' marketing efforts.

In the third part of our video marketing series, we mentioned the idea of educational videos. Edutainment has always been a big hit in the visual media world. People love watching how to make or do something, even if they have no intentions of making or doing it themselves, and even if they don't really recall the video later. This video marketing trend is growing more and more apparent on platforms like Facebook, where people scrolling through their feed will pause to watch a thirty-second recipe video if the finished product looks good. So, what are others doing that you can do just as well?

As we discussed in Part 2 of this series, hooking your audience’s attention is vital to the success of your video marketing efforts. However, to grab that attention, your small business must create the right videos tailored for the right platforms.

In Part 1 of our series, we discussed the benefit of incorporating videos into your marketing strategy.  People enjoy consuming video media online. It's easier than reading, more engaging than audio-only content, and is a great way to mix entertainment and education. Finding the right balance between entertainment and promotion is critical when it comes to using video marketing to bring in new customers and to strengthen your customer base. Your videos shouldn’t be aggressively promotional because that's not the content most people desire and watch.

Small businesses can be at a disadvantage when it comes to video marketing. You don't necessarily have the immediate brand recognition of a behemoth brand like Walmart, and you clearly don't have the marketing budget of a quality car-brand like Cadillac. But small businesses have their own unique strengths when it comes to reaching out to potential customers. Here's how to leverage those strengths with powerful video content:

When writing website copy or content for your business, keywords are a huge factor for SEO. The right keywords rank you higher on Google's search results, so achieving this requires the right tools and resources. One such tool is Google's Keyword Planner, which has features such as searching for new keywords, seeing how they work with current marketing trends, and multiplying keyword lists together to generate fresh keywords. Here are some tips on how to properly use Google’s Keyword Planner.

As a small business, social media platforms such as Facebook are a great way to stay in front of your target audience. Along with gaining an audience through your posts, your business can also place ads through Facebook. The social media platform has paid advertising available for various objectives, including awareness, conversion, and consideration with many options available within them to put together a great ad.

Social media is evolving rapidly, which means that there are frequent changes to mainstay platforms such as LinkedIn. As LinkedIn continues to grow and gain more users, there have been significant changes to the platform itself. Most recently, LinkedIn has rolled out a fresh and new look to personal, and more importantly company pages. Not only does the platform have a new look, but they’ve added advanced features to more effectively utilize the professional social network.

Data analysis can allow a small business owner to interpret historical results and analyze how those results might impact future trends. In our recent blog on June 28th, we discussed what business intelligence is and the purpose of data analysis. However, the question remains, how can a small business owner gather data for analysis?

Instagram is one of the most accessible and most popular social media platform when it comes to advertising with unique images. If you are trying to expand your reach and stay connected with your customers, an Instagram account is a great way to do just that and here’s why.