imSMB LAUNCHES WEBHOSTINGCAMPAIGN.COM TO RAISE $1 MILLION FOR CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS

New Service Lets Small Businesses Support Worthy Causes With Their Web Hosting Fees

SAN DIEGO, CA, MARCH 14, 2012 – Today every small business needs a website, so every small business pays Web hosting fees. But what if your business’s Web hosting fees—a small expense you probably don’t even think about–could help returning military veterans, end animal cruelty or even save a child’s life? Now, they can.

Web services provider imSMB has teamed up with the ASPCA, Doctors Without Borders, PPCLI Foundation and The Wounded Warriors Foundation in a quest to raise $1 million for these worthwhile organizations. Small businesses that visit imSMB’s new website, WebHostingCampaign.com, and buy Web hosting services through the site will have more than 50 percent of their Web hosting fees donated to the charity of their choice.

“Small businesses want to give back—it’s rewarding, and just feels right,” said imSMB co-founder Mark Drake. “WebHostingCampaign.com will help these worthwhile organizations while providing a much-needed service to businesses that want to be found on the Internet.”

“In today’s business environment, companies must have a website so they can promote themselves,” said imSMB co-founder Stephen Woodcock. “By signing up for Web hosting with us through WebHostingCampaign.com, small business owners can promote their business while also helping a cause that’s important to them.”

To participate, all a small business needs to do is go to www.webhostingcampaign.com, choose which of the four organizations they’d like to support, and press the “Sign Up” button on the landing page of that organization. As part of the hosting package, imSMB not only registers the domain name for the business, but also gives them the tools to easily build a website. Once the business has subscribed to Web hosting, imSMB will pledge $55 (more than 50 percent of the annual hosting fee) toward the organization the small business chooses to support.

Even small businesses that already have websites can get in on the act and make sure their Web hosting fees support a worthy cause. imSMB can transfer a business’s existing website to its hosting services, quickly and easily. All the business needs to do is simply follow the same steps above, and they will be given the option to transfer an existing website.

Small businesses that choose to support worthy causes through WebHostingCampaign.com can let their customers know by proudly displaying the WebHostingCampaign.com logo on their websites, business cards and wherever else they choose.  imSMB will provide the logo and will even install it on their websites for them.

About imSMB:
Based in San Diego, California, imSMB provides website design, Web hosting and Internet marketing for small businesses. imSMB stands for “I Am Small Medium Business.” Founders Stephen Woodcock and Mark Drake own a San Diego Web Design firm and have been involved in Web services for over 15 years. For more information, visit Web hosting to Help Make That Difference or call 877-394-6762.

On Line Advertising

What is Online Advertising?

Online advertising is a form of advertising that uses the Internet to deliver marketing messages to entice customers to use your services. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, Banner Ads, Rich Media Ads, Online Classified Advertising, and Advertising Networks. Although the influence of online advertising is still being studied, it is a rapidly-growing segment of the advertising dollar.

Why use Online Advertising?

Why you should be using internet advertising? Why should you spend your money on something you are unsure about or have no experience in? Well, there is an age-old motto that says, “It pays to advertise”. You could deliver one of mankind’s most extraordinary pieces of merchandise or service, but if you do not advertise on the Internet, nobody will be capable of discovering you. It really is that simplistic!

Methods of Online Advertising:

• Contextual Ads: Small to medium business owners can save expenses by using a contextual advertising program because the targets are so specific. Certain sites, like news and publisher sites benefit from contextual advertising because the content on these sites is so specific that the returned ads will be targeted to the search engine user.
• Banner Ads: A banner ad is similar to a traditional ad you would see in a printed publication such as a newspaper or magazine, but it has the additional ability of bringing a potential client directly to your Web site.
• Rich Media Ads: Rich media refers to online advertising that makes use of a range of interactive digital media including streaming video and audio. The ads usually change as a user’s mouse passes over.
• Online Classified Advertising: Classified advertising is a form of advertising which is particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals, which may be sold or distributed, free of charge. Advertisements in the classified ads are typically short, as they are charged for by the line.

Best Practices of Online Advertising?

Online advertising is an important marketing strategy for many businesses. Best practices include:

• Develop a system to routinely monitor your ad placements as well as your contract with any online advertising or affiliate network.
• Set Clear Objectives: Identify what business goals the campaign is designed to achieve, and, just as importantly, the metrics by which those objectives will be assessed.

More Information?

If you’d like more information on using Email Marketing to enhance your business please give us a call, we would be happy to help you in any way we can!

Call Now! 1-877-629-3374

You’ve probably heard of Foursquare, the biggest location-based social networking site for mobile devices. Users check in at locations such as stores and restaurants, and earn points for free products or services. More and more businesses are realizing that location-based social networking is a huge marketing opportunity that can bring customers to their doors. And now with Facebook getting in on the location-based game, the phenomenon is sure to explode.

Location-based marketing has incredible growth potential as more and more consumers get smartphones and rely more heavily on their phones for daily tasks. So what do you need to know about the newest option, Facebook Places?

“Facebook Places, like Foursquare, is all about local loyalty programs and check-in mania,” says Ben Fisher, co-founder of imSMB, a Web site development company for small businesses. “Check-ins are used by more and more influencers to share where they are and opinions on what they like.” Getting started with a Facebook Places page will add another layer of social media responsibilities to your already busy schedule, but you need to do it, because you can bet your bottom dollar your competitors will.

Here are Fisher’s tips on how to get started using Facebook Places to enhance your small business and drive more customer interaction.

1. Create your business Facebook Fan Page.

2. Connect your Places page to your Fan Page. To connect your Places page, you first need to make the place and check in. If someone has not checked in or created your Places address, you will need to do this yourself. You can do this via Facebook’s mobile page (Facebook touch mobile site) or from the Facebook iPhone mobile application.

Click “check in” on either app and then choose your current location. If you do not see your business, click the + sign or ADD and enter the name and description of your business. Then simply check in.

3. Log in to Facebook.com and visit your Facebook Pages Wall. You should see the “check in” you just did on Places. Click the link to your Places page and look for the “Is this your business?” link at the bottom of the page. Click the link and start the process of verifying your business.

4. To verify your business, you will need to either submit paperwork proving you are legally connected to your physical address listed on the Facebook page, or verify your business over the phone. After verification, your place and page will be linked together, and then visitors can “like” and check in at your place as well as view an activity stream of people who are checking in at your place.

Once your place and page are completed, you will need to curate and update them on a regular basis. Encourage your customers to check in and share their experiences, offer specials to customers who check in on your Places page, and be creative. It’s free marketing, so take advantage of it!

David Gass
Founder, Business Credit Services, Inc.
Earn.com Expert Advisor

Source: http://www.bcscredit.com/blog/2010/09/21/marketing-your-business-with-facebook-places/ and Earn.Com

Back in the early days of the Internet, Web hosts didn’t offer much  in the way of real help for growing a small business, and small businesses were still in the dark about how having a Web site could really drive new business. Fast forward to today and if your company isn’t online, customers can’t find you and will just go to your competitor.

So, how can a Web host help your business actually grow? Ben Fisher, co-founder of the Web development and hosting company imSMB, says with the tens of thousands of companies that can provide hosting, look for a Web host that offers value-added services ranging from advertising to business advice. “Most Web hosts will offer you many free booster packages to get you going and ensure you actually use your website,” says Fisher.

Here are just a few of the value-adds you can look for in a Web host:

• E-mail marketing tools
• Advertising credits on search engines like Yahoo
• Discounted rates on press release distribution
• Free SEO reports
• Free text links
• Free website building tools

Most entrepreneurs pick a Web hosting company by getting a referral from another business. So if you’re happy with your Web host, why not join their affiliate program and get paid whenever you refer someone else to them? “While payouts can vary widely, from a percentage of the sale to a flat commission per sale, some SMBs are able to cover all their own hosting fees simply by referring a few people as customers to their own Web host,” says Joshua Sloan, a hosting industry veteran and marketing consultant at SloanTech.com.

Some rules and restrictions may apply, but there are many small businesses making hundreds to thousands of dollars in referral earnings from their hosting company. “In fact,” says Sloan, “many web hosts gain 20 to 35 percent of their new customers from referrals.” If you know how to paste a link into an e-mail, or set up a redirecting sub-domain, you’ll be ready to cash in on referral opportunities offered by your Web host. Just ask them – they’ll help you get started.

David Gass
Founder, Business Credit Services, Inc.
Earn.com Expert Advisor

Featured on EARN.Com : http://www.earn.com/blog/how-a-web-host-can-help-your-business-grow-903.html

By David Gass, Earn.com Expert Advisor

Everyone is doing it – and it’s no wonder. One of the easiest ways to spread the word about your business is to use social media. But where do you start? What’s the best way to build your profile? The list of social media platforms can be overwhelming, and new ones pop up every day. Ben Fisher, co-founder of imSMB, offers this advice:

Determine your goals. What do you want to accomplish? Do you want to increase sales? Drive customers to your storefront or website? Analyze your competitors and track what they’re doing?

Secure your identities. It’s important to secure your online identity. Start by selecting a persona for yourself and then register that persona on as many social websites as you can. Hint: If you can’t obtain your company name, use something like @MyCompanyFans. Then contact the provider and see how you can claim your persona.

Next, register your company name as well as the names of your products and services. At a minimum, you should sign up on Twitter, create a Facebook fan page from your personal Facebook profile and then create a Facebook group, and register at LinkedIn. Use a tool like Knowem? which not only helps you determine if your personas are available, but also registers them for you.

Here’s a quick look at the major social media platforms.

Facebook is now the largest social network. Its profiles and fan pages can take your brand awareness to a whole new level. Your Facebook fans and friends can easily share news about your business with their friends, who then share it with their friends, and so on. For statistics junkies, Facebook provides an analytics tool that allows you to view weekly reports detailing your new fans, numbers of interactions, and types of actions taken on your pages.

Twitter is a great way to keep track of who is talking about your company and to find people who should know about you. The volume of information on Twitter can become overwhelming quickly, so create a plan to connect with people of influence and your customers. Reply to all non-spam direct messages (DMs) as fast as you can. Also, use tools that will auto-tweet for you as well as help maintain your following-to-follower ratio. Check out Cotweet.com andHootsuite.com. Both are free tools to help manage all of your social profiles in one neat package.

LinkedIn is an online networking tool that’s especially valuable for business-to-business companies. Connect with your existing colleagues and contacts, make new ones, and find out what projects people are working on and how they can help you. You can form or join groups on LinkedIn, ask and answer questions, and put yourself in front of a valuable audience of potential partners and customers.

New social media sites are cropping up all the time, vying for your attention and the attention of your customers. Try not to be like a kid in a candy store. Find out where your customers are talking about your brand and competitors, and interact there. Mashable.com is a great place to keep tabs on new and emerging social media sites and tools.

David Gass is the Founder of Business Credit Services, Inc. (BCS) and is an Earn.com Expert Advisor.

Source: http://www.incorporate.com/Jul28NewsSocial.html

Video game demographics generally involves studying the video gaming habits of various kinds of people from different age groups. There are several primary and secondary researching techniques which are used like phone and personal interviews as well as the analysis of market surveys, company literature and trade journals. One such company called Eedar and ComScore are excellent paid sources for demographics.

The demographics of those video game players and related studies usually reveal that video games and playing them are adult-oriented forms of entertainment. Based on the studies conducted, video games are extensively played by men and women alike and nearly 60% of Americans are playing them.

Studying the demographics of video game players also include the various demographic variables like how many people in the population are actually playing them, what the average age of players is, the gender of video game players, what video games they play and what the effects these video games have on the population. Recent studies have shown that many people consider video games to be a very important entertainment medium.

Based on video game demographics, women make up a significant 39% of those who play video games in the population. Also, a surprising 40% of online gamers are women. 35% are below eighteen years old. And based on studies, the people who regularly play video games are in the 18 to 34 year old age group. As a coincidence this is the perfect target market for most consumer goods.

Overall, the video game industries and developers are the ones who make the most out of video game demographics. It is through these that they are able to identify the characteristics and preferences of customers and potential clients. They also use video game demographics so that they can enhance the games they develop and release.

Another aspect that I find compelling is that gamers tend to also have a larger amount of disposable income and tend to spend more toward entertainment and spend a tremendous amount of time talking about themselves or their favorite game in quite a few social media outlets, like Digg and N4g ( News for Gamers ).

Web hosting companies fit into this equation in a few ways.

1. A web host can help a game player establish a blog or social community very easily and inexpensively ( See imBroke )
2. Hosts can  also help with the technical side of a blog and offer help in the search arena.
3. A gamer that has a blog can also monetize their  own social profile using affiliate income to offset the costs of buying games.

The fact is that video gamers are the perfect target market for most consumer goods, as such gamers have a great potential to make some income while following their passion. Play a game, build a blog and make some money to support your habit.

How to Build a Great Website

By Rieva Lesonsky, Earn.com Expert Advisor

Everyone tells you how easy it is to design and build a website, but the truth is, building a quality website takes preparation and know-how. I asked Ben Fisher of imSMB for tips on how to build a great website from the start.

1. Examine your closest competition. When talking to a Web designer, you need to give them direction. After all, you know your industry. Start your Web design quest by analyzing the competition. Reach out to an online information source. Who is seeing the best results? How are they converting? Once you discover who your main competitors are, tell your designer that you want something close to these websites. Give the designers at least three sites as examples. What elements do good sites have in common? Is there a big red button to “sign up now?” Are they using a form to capture leads? Note these features and let your designer know that these are elements you want in your design.

2. Choose the right platform. So, WordPress, Joomla, B2Evolution…where to start? Choosing the proper platform for your site is of the utmost importance. You want to make sure your website’s page names are search friendly and easy to read. WordPress has some great options for what is called a permalink structure. You also want to be able to add content and make changes to your site in an easy and efficient way without having to bug a webmaster. Out of all the CMS systems, WordPress is the simplest and most efficient for small businesses. You can launch your website, choose a theme (or have a webmaster customize a theme for your needs), easily put in place new features (like Twitter orFacebook) with one click, and update your website effortlessly.

3. Integrate analytics. Whatever CMS you choose, you will need to measure your website’s success. One free tool any website owner can use is Google Analytics. The service is free, easy to set up, and has nice reports that can show you how people are getting to your site and what they are doing. For those of you who spend money on advertising, it can also help you track the effectiveness of and sales from ads.

4. Launch! Then tweak. One common mistake when building a website is wishing for it to be perfect at launch, and then nit-picking the design elements or wording. This ends up delaying the launch of a site for weeks, if not months. Pick a few people you trust—possibly consultants to your industry or your favorite customers—to give you feedback, but limit it to a few people. Ultimately, the decision of what looks and feels right is up to you. Rather than seek perfection, get the site up and running, and then make changes based on user behavior that you (or your webmaster) observe from tools. One easy-to-use tool called ClickTale allows you to actually watch a video of what users are doing on your website—every mouse click, form fill, etc.

Rieva Lesonsky is an Earn.com Expert Advisor. She is also CEO of GrowBiz Media, a content and consulting company that helps entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. Follow Rieva at Twitter.com/Rieva and visit SmallBizDaily.comto sign up for her free TrendCast reports

Original post located at http://www.incorporate.com/Jul14NewsWebsite.html

Figuring out the fundamentals of SMB search engine optimization is just not difficult at all to perform. After all, it is a logical and systematic approach to your market. Having extensive knowledge of how it works and the way it is completed may definitely go far when it involves getting the lead over your competition. After all, knowing it totally would definitely bring you nice results in terms of increasing your current business standing. Surely you’re by now conscious of the significance of your Google ranking towards the profitability of your business. If you have been pondering simply how to do that and how to “tweak” your website accordingly in order for it to rank higher, then here are some tips to help you get going.

Keyword Research - This is definitely one of the most significant aspects of search engine optimization. It all begins with good keyword analysis and your capability to filter your list down to the best keywords. In fact, a lot would suggest that you’ve got 2 keyword lists. 1 list would contain your main keywords and the second one would contain all the related keywords. This will help you organize everything better. Bear in mind that list number one is for your main page and list number two is for your less significant web pages and articles.

Get to Be familiar with Your Competition - Lots of website owners truly have no idea how their competition got to the height which they are in right now. This is why observing and keeping tabs on what they do is very important. You can learn from what they have done as well as from their successes and failures. This would definitely offer you the info you want when it involves deciding regarding your next move and what you should keep away from.

Optimize Your Web Pages - This is the simplest component of the whole method as all you need to perform is set your template properly and from there on, it’ll only be a matter of tweaking the pages of your web site to follow the standard. Optimization would comprise all the applicable tags like keywords, alt, titles and descriptions. It would additionally include keyword density on your pages and articles. Last of all, your website’s content. Make sure that everything is correctly functioning and in order.

Create External Links - Do not forget that when it involves links, both quality and quantity are important. All the optimization specialists agree that one of the biggest factors that could make all of this preparing effectual is great quality links to your site. In fact, it would be a good gesture if you might sometimes even produce internal links to those web sites in return for linking your web site to theirs. Very simply in this case, it is a give and take deal. You link them and they will link you back. Everybody benefits from it in the end. Having stated that, it is still significant to have a lot of one way links returning into your website. One tool you can use for getting one way text links is by using aTextLinks service.