LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube… once only visited for personal use, these sites are now being used for business purposes. We all hear about them and see their icons everywhere. And, we feel out of touch or like we are dropping the ball if we don’t have profiles on all of them.

It is true that social media sites help business. But how? Most of the case studies we read about are about big business and their bigger than life social media campaigns. How can small business benefit?

The truth is—at least our opinion of it—that there are no step-by-step rules to follow …

An important thing to remember when you go looking for your online market is that nobody can tell you more about your audence than your audience itself. With that in mind, here are five ways to …

You’ve got the facts. Do you have the feelings? Show them!

When you’re making a presentation, you’re imparting information. Whatever your message might be—Vote! or Buy my new book! or Floss after meals! — you have some emotional attachment to it. (If you truly do not, I recommend you decline invitations to speak.)

Let your audience see and hear your emotions. I’m not saying every presentation needs to be a Hallmark moment. You don’t need to hand out Kleenex. But you need to impart more than mere facts if you want to motivate your audience.

Let’s take an …

You’ve been there… eyelids growing heavy, mind wandering, sitting through another boring business presentation. And what happens when it’s your turn to speak? Chances are you are committing some of the same presentations sins as everyone else. One of the greatest of these sins is the misuse of presentation software like PowerPoint.

Slides laden with bulleted text are not ingredients for a powerful presentation. But many of us don’t know any better. The templates provided by the software seem to beg for bullets and text and slide titles and logos and clipart. What were meant as tools to make …

My friend Gene called me on my home phone to ask for my business phone number, in order to pass it along to a potential customer. Gene is one of the brightest, more insightful people I know, and he has a website for his own business. But it did not occur to him to simply give the potential customer my web address.

Lesson learned: Not everyone in my world is Internet savvy. Levels of experience dip and sway from people who use email and do nothing else on line;  who surf but don’t bookmark;  who buy online but don’t know how …

You have a good well designed website, one that serves as a resource to all its visitors (clients, vendors, prospects, and employees alike). You produce regular articles, either for your blog or newsletter. You have a valuable product or service that you want to share and a unique selling proposition. Now you just need to figure out how to direct people to your site – and not just any people, but those who will produce a good return on your investment.

That means knowing your audience and targeting your outreach. How can you spread your content to …

As we run our businesses we are seeking to keep our competitive advantage and push the potential of our businesses farther. One simple best practice that has the greatest return is ‘know your audience.’ Simple as it sounds, it is one of the most frequently neglected marketing tools.

1,2,3 Easy. Capture your existing client data. Track your marketing and sales communication activities. Analyze the client data to make smarter business choices. Customize your approach to achieve more powerful results. Sounds like more work than the return. Where does it payoff?

Optimize Time. Save money by optimizing the use …

You did your homework of understanding your audience when planning your site. You looked at the demographics and at the needs of each audience that might end up browsing your pages: existing clients, prospects, partners, and internal staff. You organized your content to match those needs and came up with a suitable navigation menu. You even paid attention to their screen resolutions and most used browser versions. Is that it?

How about finding out your audience’s online behavior? What sites are these users browsing when they are NOT on your site?

Why would you want to know? Knowing where these visitors “hang out” online …