Register.com Article on Social Media Tools Useful for Business

5 Social Media Tools for Your Business 

Learn about the top social media tools you should explore for your business

Which social-media sites are best for your business? It depends on your company size, your industry, and your social-media goals. It also depends on what type of social networking you enjoy and will persist in doing.

Major social-media sites can be a great place to find customers due to their large user bases, but it takes a lot of effort to get attention there. It's like walking into a very large, crowded room, but there's only a small cluster of people having the conversation you want to jump in on - and you have to find them. By contrast, more specialized social-media sites where the audience is more engaged as consumers and specific by industry may prove more effective for your business.

Here's my list of five critical social-media tools to investigate for your business:

Facebook - With major corporations such as Toys R Us previewing their Black Friday sales on their Facebook fan pages, this 350-million-user site isn't for kids anymore. Facebook is the number-two Web site in America according to research house Alexa, and its fastest-growing demographic is people over age 35. To add fans and generate excitement, consider holding a contest or making a special offer.

YouTube – With hundreds of millions of videos viewed daily, YouTube is the fourth-biggest U.S. site, and it's fast becoming a canny marketing tool. Because let's face it, America loves to watch movies. Music teachers post lessons, car salesmen show you the latest models, consultants give mini-courses… what could you upload to create excitement about your business?

LinkedIn - This is the place where pro business owners go for power networking. Answer questions for the site's 50 million users or ask them, scope out who's viewing your profile, update your status with your needs or company triumphs. They're adding features too – now you can link your LinkedIn status to your Twitter posts, and display your WordPress blog on your home page.

Twitter – Some people find the home of 140-character posts and hashtagged trending topics baffling and/or annoying, but Twitter is the social network to watch. Only 18 million U.S. users, but growing at a phenomenal rate - up 343% year-over-year as of Sept. 2009, Nielsen reports. New features such as lists and retweet tracking are helping users form new connections.

Your blog and local/specialized forums - If you write well and have the time, blogging can be a powerful way to raise awareness about what you do. The content updates also help your site's natural search rankings. Reach a wider audience with guest posts on popular industry forums. If your business is local, neighborhood forums may be a good option.

This article is brought to you Register.com Learning Resource Center for their Register.com Affiliate Program.

Register.com Article with Tips on How to Make Your Business Grow

How to Grow Your Business in a Downturn

How to continue to drive growth in your business, even during a recession

Patrick Sullivan and his business partner didn't pick a great time to start their digital-music royalty tracking service - it was late 2007 when they founded New York City-based Rightsflow. But that hasn't stopped the company from growing. At the end of 2009, Rightsflow had grown tenfold during the year and Sullivan expected revenue to quadruple in 2010.

To promote the company, Sullivan says Rightsflow joined eight different trade groups and attended every conference they could find, handing out 10,000 business cards in the process. Eventually, their efforts paid off in client referrals.

"The name of the game for us was bootstrapping," he says. "We did every creative thing we could think of to control our cash. Then, we followed the dollar and found clients who still had money."

The down economy has many small business owners feeling glum. But savvy entrepreneurs are continuing to grow their online businesses. We asked two small-business experts for tips on how to grow your business - Cameron Herold of Back Pocket COO and Stephanie Chandler, author of Leap! 101 Ways to Grow Your Business (Career Press 2009). Below is their advice on the best steps to take to drive growth.

Ramp up marketing. If competitors aren't marketing, now's the time to buy ads, says Herold. You get great value for your ad dollar right now as publications and Web sites are discounting their ad prices.

Use article marketing. Draw new customers by marketing your expertise through distributing informational articles or blogs in social media, Chandler says.

Get free exposure. Get listed in every free directory online, says Chandler. If you belong to networking or trade association groups, be sure to take full advantage of the online profile perks that come with membership. Sell some goods through free Craigslist ads, just to circulate your brand name to their audience. Another key exposure spot for Chandler: online city guides such as CitySearch, especially if your business is primarily local.

Turn all your employees into salespeople. Herold advocates for offering all company workers a raise - by asking them to do more selling, and paying them entirely on commission. There's no up-front cost, and you can boost sales.

Fire bad customers. It's a general rule that 20 percent of your customers bring you 80 percent of your revenue. Examine your client list and figure out which clients aren't worth the time you're spending on them, then let them go. This will free up your time to seek better-quality clients.

Find a new niche. If business is suffering in the industry you've been targeting, research new industry sectors that could use your products or services.

Use new channels. Chandler is a fan of selling some products or services through eBay, just for the exposure to a different audience. "I know an airplane parts company that started selling their parts on eBay, and found a whole new audience," she says.

Eliminate the competition. Herold is fond of an old saying attributed to McDonald's founder Ray Kroc - if your competitor is drowning, stick a hose in their mouth. Aggressively recruit their key employees to weaken their business, or actively pursue their key customers. It may not be friendly, but it could help your business survive. "If they're going out of business," Herold says, "make that happen faster. Their best employees are just waiting to be poached."

Reposition. Look at your existing products and services and how they fit into the current down market. If they’re not selling well as is, maybe they can be broken up into smaller, more affordable pieces, bundled together into a set and sold for more, or repackaged to fit current trends.

Build partnerships. "When I was the COO of 1-800-Got-Junk," Herold relates, "we locked up a relationship with a major garbage company. They didn’t haul trash, so they gave us all their referrals." To do more business with less administrative hassle, Herold says to find 20 strong partnerships with online companies that could send you business and pay them an affiliate fee, rather than letting hundreds sign up as marketing affiliates. Make it exclusive, and those few affiliates will work harder to help you sell.

Remember that many of the most successful companies today were started during recessions. If you can learn to run your business lean and land clients now, when the economy improves, you'll be set to take off.

This article is brought to you Register.com Learning Resource Center for their Register.com Affiliate Program.

Register.com Article on Web Design Ideas

10 Design Tips for Your Web Site

how to make your site an enticing place for new and existing customers

There's nothing like a cluttered, clunky Web site to drive away prospective customers. How can you make your site an enticing place? Here are my tips for improving 10 key aspects of your Web site.

Navigation - Put some real thought into site layout, so customers can navigate it easily. Make sure all important sections are prominently listed. Link as many pages as you can into the main navigation bar, instead of having subpages from pages.

Branding - Incorporate memorable elements of your brand into your Web site, such as your logo and company color scheme. Make your logo prominent on your home page and put it on all subsequent pages to promote your brand.

Home page - Visitors should be able to tell immediately what your site is about. Any call to action such as "Buy Now" should be visually prominent on the page.

Content - If your primary business is offline, just present enough clear, concise information to get customers to call or email. If you sell your products or services online, provide complete information to give customers the confidence to click and buy. Don't put too much content on any one page, as Internet readers don't like to scroll down.

Refresh content - Changing content draws customers back. One easy way to renew your content without a lot of code changes is by starting a blog.

Think SEO - Always bear search engine optimization (SEO) in mind as you design. Photos and splashy graphics may look nice, but likely won’t be read by search engines. One fix: have a text link that says "View portfolio" instead of a graphical button. The text will be more easily read by search engines.

Colors - Use complementary colors that make your text easily readable. Clashing colors such as red text on a blue background make text too hard to read and turn off visitors.

Be accessible - Make sure your contact information or a prominent link to it is at the top or bottom of every page of your site.

Sound good - Music that starts playing automatically when your site loads is an automatic turnoff for many visitors. If you have sound, make sure it's pleasant and easily disabled.

External links - Links that take visitors away from your site should always load in a new window. Make sure your site stays in front of the customer, even as you provide them with additional resources.

This article is brought to you Register.com Learning Resource Center for their Register.com Affiliate Program.

Register.com Article on .Com's 25th Birthday

Happy Birthday .Com - 25 Years Old!

Symbolics.com was the first .com registered on March 15, 1985 for the "world wide web." Today there are over 80 million .Com websites and the domain is a prominent feature of the internet.

Register.com is proud to be an integral part of the success of .Com. On April 21, 1999, ICANN announced that Register.com was one of the first five test bed registrars for the competitive Shared Registry System. On June 2nd 1999, Register.com was the first of the test bed registrars to begin operations as a registrar of .Com domain names. Since then, Register.com has registered millions of .com names for its customers.

The first .Com name registered by Register.com was SportsReporters.Com. We're proud to report that the owners of SportsReporters.Com are still loyal customers.

The economic impact of .Com has been quantified in a study by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). The ITIF found that the .Com domain serves as a platform for $400 billion in annual economic activity. .Com domain names drive more than $1.5 trillion in global annual economic activity, more than the global sales of medicine, investment in renewable energy, and government investment in R&D, combined. The ITIF estimates that the economic activity flowing across the .com infrastructure is likely to grow to $950 billion in annual revenue by 2020.

The .Com domain has defined a generation of innovation and entrepreneurism, serving as the launch pad for a new generation of companies that have transformed communications, commerce, entertainment and more.

"My young kids can’t fathom life without the internet. People above the age of 30 realize what a profound change the internet has had on human lives," said Jason Teichman, SVP, Marketing & Product Management. "Register.com is proud of the role we play in helping the Internet make a positive impact, especially for small businesses."

Did you know?

The most popular words among .com URL's today include "home" (1.2 million), "online" (1 million) and "land" (891,000).

The domain name system is used more than 1 trillion times per day... so in 1 second that is more than 20 million times.

Policy Impact Forum panelist and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt said the .com domain has become a "common medium for humanity."

The second domain registered by Register.com was EagleCompany.Com

This article is brought to you Register.com Learning Resource Center for their Register.com Affiliate Program.

Register.com Article on Finding Financing for Your Business

How to find financing for your business

Learn about the pros and cons of various sources of funding for your start up

Whenever I'm at a party, entrepreneurs seem to find me. Once they find out I work for Register.com, they start telling me about their business idea. The next thing I know, they want my advice on where they can find the money they need to start their company.

I think many entrepreneurs jump too fast to the fundraising stage, so I usually ask them to consider a few items before they start this process. Those questions include:

How long can you live off your savings? I had a friend who started a small business with a decent amount in the bank. But he didn’t realize it would be eight months with no dollars coming in at the beginning, and soon he was panicked. Many startups aren't able to borrow enough to cover their expenses in the initial months, just enough to operate the business.

How in debt are you willing to go? This is a vital question to answer. Know your comfort level with being in debt, and how that squares with how much money it will take to start the business you have in mind. Some people might say, "I'm only willing to do $100,000." If so, what will you do if the business turns out to require more funding?

Have you estimated how much money you'll really need? Many new business owners plunge ahead without a clear sense of how much money they will need. They end up having to raise money repeatedly during their startup period, exhausting their energy and risking the business's future if they're unsuccesful in finding subsequent loans.

Once you have a clear idea of your appetite for debt and the amount you'll need to raise, it's time to consider your possible funding sources.

Sources of funding

Your retirement accounts. I'm not personally in favor of taking money out of your 401(k) account, but its something to think about. Under some circumstances, you can borrow this money out and repay it without penalty - consult a good tax professional to make sure the way you're doing it is best from a tax perspective. Advantages of this method: It's fast, little paperwork is required, nobody asks you how you plan to use the money, and rates can be low.

Liquidate assets. If you own a boat, vacation home, appreciated stock or other assets you could liquidate, consider using them to fund the business. Your business won't be burdened by interest payments if you can find the cash to start it from your own assets.

Friends and family. Often, a loan source may be close to hand - not just your family members and personal friends, but the people within their extended network. To give everyone a clear understanding of the loan terms and avoid bad feelings, write a contract and then carefully track payments - Web sites such as Virgin Money and ZimpleMoney make it easy to do online.

Peer loans. If your personal network fails you, try a peer-to-peer lending site such as Zopa.com. Peer sites check your credit, assign you a credit rating, and then let you make your case to their large networks of individual lenders. If enough lenders contribute to your loan to fund it, the site packages and administers the loan. Loans can take as little as two or three weeks to obtain here. On the downside, interest rates will likely be fairly high.

Microloans. If you need an amount under $35,000, consider a microfinance lender such as Kiva.org or Accion. They fund a lot of one-person businesses, and rates are usually fairly reasonable. On the downside, they may want to disburse the money in stages, not all at once.

Revolving line of credit. Rather than getting a loan with a set term and interest rate, it's sometimes easier to get a bank to give you a revolving line of credit. With this loan type, as you pay back money it becomes available for borrowing again.

SBA-guaranteed bank loans. Many new businesses get funding through bank loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration. If you plan to approach bank loan officers, come prepared. Write a business plan and bring materials you need to illustrate your concept. Whether it's a PowerPoint presentation, a mock-up, or maybe a software demonstration, come prepared to demonstrate your idea to bankers. People think if they have good credit they can show up at the bank and get a business loan, but that isn’t the case. Banks need to know it's a real idea that can become a viable business.

Also know what the SBA guarantee means - it helps the lending bank if you don't repay the loan. It is not a guarantee that the SBA will cover your loan obligation if your business doesn’t succeed.

This article is brought to you Register.com Learning Resource Center for their Register.com Affiliate Program.