Blog

After three densely-packed days at SMX West in Santa Clara I’ve come away with some overall impressions to share. Needless to say this info is far from exhaustive, but it provides some insights regarding what is getting talked about and what has traction in the search space!

Many people don’t realize it, but staying organized can be one of the keys to your small business success. For instance, let’s look at your personal file storage. Do you keep team files on your hard drive? If so, I’m sure it takes up a lot of space, slows your computer down, and can only be accessed by one person – quite an inconvenience. One way to address this problem is by backing up your files on the internet through websites that provide online storage. There’s a variety of websites that provide free accounts and come with a minimum of 2GB of storage space. They are basically a virtual hard drive that you can store and share files. And, it’s usually fairly straight forward way to sync your files with the added benefit of being able to access them wherever you have Internet access. Plus, you can also use some as a “drop box” for distributing large files that would otherwise clog a recipient’s email inbox.

WebVisible CEO Kirsten Mangers recently spoke on a panel at the “Using Social Media to Grow Your Business” seminar conducted by the Association for Women in Technology (www.awtsocal.org).
It was a great discussion for any business entering the social media space for the first time. The panel highlighted the type of investment businesses should expect to make in social media and detailed how to make the discipline an integral part of a company’s business plans.

Is Social Media Saturated?

Moderator and CEO at Talent Evolution, Jared Smith, kicked off the discussion with a thought provoking question:

For the nearly 14 million children in the US living below the federal poverty level, the holidays can be especially difficult, with food and shelter taking precedence over Xbox and Barbie. WebVisible recently teamed up with the American Red Cross to reach out to approximately 1,600 local families from communities in Orange County, California for [...]

If the future is local and hyper-local, then the future is search
By Kevin Ryan, CMO WebVisible
New research from Unisfair finds that for 2010, 60 percent of online marketers will be focused on new customer acquisition. The same study found that toward this goal, 75 percent of marketers will be increasing spending in social media, while [...]

While big brands are all over social media, many small business owners have yet to invest in social marketing initiatives. According to a recent Citibank survey on social media usage by small businesses, few are using the social networking sites. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed said they haven’t found sites like Facebook and Twitter helpful [...]

Search Engine Land reports that Twitter is getting more serious about search and has hired a former Yahoo! guru. Small business owners – have you checked out Twitter? It’s not just for big business or brand names.
There are many examples of local business owners using it for targeted online advertising. (It’s worth a look… just [...]

When using social media and blogs to conduct small business marketing online, its important to be careful not to cross that tempting line into posting shall we say ‘embellished’ reviews for your company.
Last week, the state of New York settled with a cosmetic surgery firm after the they allegedly published fake consumer reviews across [...]

Once considered a social network for teens and tweens, Facebook has quickly become a viable tool for businesses to connect with customers, network and generate awareness of their products or services. Today, more than half of the visitors to social networking sites are 35 and older, according to a recent industry report issued by comScore. [...]

MediaPost notes a recent Forrester research report that only 16% of consumers trust corporate blogs, and compares company blogs to the used car salesmen of media.
We re-launched our company blog a couple months ago with 1 primary goal – harness the collective knowledge and energy that is WebVisible, and share it with the marketplace.  I’ve [...]