Handle Your Business

I remember two years ago listening to a Web expert predict that eventually websites would be all video instead of print. While it hasn’t quite reached that extreme, it’s hard to ignore the impact videos and YouTube are having as a marketing tool. As a small business owner, you may want to take a close look at this amazing tool.

Thanks to companies like Bizbox TV and Pixability, creating videos is not necessarily cost prohibitive. If you are more of a do-it-yourselfer, you can even arm yourself these days with your phone or Flip video, along with some editing software, and be on your merry way.

So how can you use video?

1. A Two-minute commercial of what you or your company does
2. Testimonials (much more impactful than just words)
3. Blog posts (sometimes referred to as Vlog) can be great to mix things up, or if you don’t like to write
4. Promotion (demo a product or your speaking style)
5. Credibility builder (“how-to”, webinars or statistical videos)
6. Lead generator (think “sales letter or sales presentation” but in video)
7. Ad or info on other websites (think advertising or strategic alliances)

Where can you use the video?

The two big ones of course are on your website (or blog) and YouTube. YouTube right Read full post…

President Obama this afternoon signed a document that ordered the U.S. military to end the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy toward homosexuals. The move, in effect, means that in 60 days, gays and lesbians will be able to serve openly in the armed forces for the first time.

“As of September 20, service members will no longer be forced to hide who they are in order to serve our country. Our military will no longer be deprived of the talents and skills of patriotic Americans just because they happen to be gay or lesbian,” Obama said in a White House statement.

The move was the final step by the Democratic president to end the policy that had been put in place during Bill Clinton’s presidency in the early 1990s. Prior to Clinton’s time in office, gays and lesbians were banned from serving, and discharges based on sexual orientation effectively were automatic. But Clinton had made a campaign promise to lift the ban, a move that proved politically problematic, so Clinton worked with Congress to enact a compromise.

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We often expound on the virtues of getting to know your banker before it ever becomes necessary to ask for a loan. And that is sound advice. One question we do keep getting, however, is “How do I establish that relationship?” It is really not so hard.

Starting out is always the toughest part. Most entrepreneurs open a business account wherever they had their personal account, simply because it is convenient. Others tackle the banking decision with a bit more direction, perhaps using one of the list of questions that we have in our Start Up Right Now series, questions like:

• How long have you been at this branch?
• How many businesses like mine do you work with?

There’s a whole passel of great questions to ask potential bankers, just to find out if they might be a good match with your particular type of business.

There are other things, too, that a good banker will be able to help you with. Read full post…

Nokia Sea Ray Windows Mango phone video surfaces First fruits of Microsoft partnership clocked.

External story.

Hotel rooms booked for future years by convention or business groups declined nearly 8 percent in the past fiscal year, Baltimore’s convention and tourism agency said Thursday.

Visit Baltimore said 457,051 rooms were booked for business conferences between next year and 2020, down from the 495,896 hotel room nights booked in fiscal 2010 for future years.

“It’s still a fantastic year,” said Tom Noonan, president and chief executive of Visit Baltimore, who announced the figure at the organization’s annual business meeting.

Noonan said the fiscal 2011 hotel bookings were affected by several factors, including an industrywide trend among meeting planners to book fewer hotel rooms to avoid overbooking.

In addition, hotels are relying less on Visit Baltimore to provide in-house hotel bookings and sales leads than they did during the recession, Noonan said.

Visit Baltimore has been focusing on attracting citywide convention bookings, or sales to groups that might require several thousand rooms on peak nights. Read full post…

The other day one of our crew received the following missive from Verio:

Boy, do I have some issues with this.

Theres nothing wrong with asking customers for positive reviews; when a client tells us that they had an especially good experience with flyte we ask them if theyd be willing to recommend one of us on LinkedIn, write up a review on Google, or let us use their message in our online marketing.

However, the idea of paying someone for a review, especially only if its favorable (their underline, not mine) seems, well, unseemly. No need to share your story with others if your experience is unfavorable. Do that on your own time.

I also have issues with the logic behind writing these reviews. Because they garner awareness of our solutions, which in turn, leads to to direct outreach.

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