Social media marketing is a great way to get exposure and create connections amongst other businesses and professionals in your industry. LinkedIn can be a confusing platform as a business, especially when it comes to knowing how to utilize it for your business's success. Keep reading to learn some tips on how to get the most out of LinkedIn.

Do you know how to truly motivate people to buy your product or service? The key is to speak their language. In order to do this, you need to understand who you are communicating to and how to communicate better. It’s not about them, it’s about you, and what you need to learn to help the consumer find the product or service they want or need – your product or service. The catch is, sometimes they aren’t aware they can get what you have to offer because you aren’t speaking to them.

Are you tired of feeling like you’re not reaching your target audience with your small business marketing?

Are you looking for good business ideas to help you craft your content to communicate even better and reach your target audience?

If you are willing to take the time to understand the people you are marketing to and how they take in information, then there is hope for your marketing!

Put yourself into this situation and find out how using personality temperaments in your marketing can help your business attract your ideal customers.

What if I told you that there is something missing from your marketing strategy that can instantly boost your business and help to make it more successful and full of passion and provision? Intrigued? 

Communication is ingrained in every part of business that we do. One of the most important parts of your business is how you communicate with your potential and current customers. How do you persuade people into thinking that your business will satisfy a need or want with your product or service? Creating trust between you and your customers helps you know how to market your business and be more successful. But how do you strategically do this while still having a passion and provision company?

Is your small business on Twitter? If so, maybe you noticed a couple months ago that Twitter rolled out analytics to all users, which in the past were only available to those who bought advertisements through them.

To have the best business in your industry, you have to figure out a way to be a better leader. You already know that being a good leader is important, but why does this matter to your business? Let’s learn more on how to be a good leader to create a better business.

Amazing leaders in history have always understood that their role as a leader is to contribute to the world and to others. They know and they’ve worked at knowing who they are and what they can contribute – you can’t be a great leader without knowing that, especially if you want to have a successful small business.

Among the more notable business leaders in recent history are Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Warren Buffet, Donald Trump…and Michael Scott? The thing is, you can be in a position of leadership and not lead well. This is the fault of Michael Scott. You know the one. The manager of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company on the hit show “The Office.” As much as we might like – err put up with – Michael Scott as a person (or as much as he likes himself!) he sucks as a leader.

[Photo courtesy of: memeblender.com]

Leaders come in all shapes and sizes and they are NOT based on a position. But when you are in a leadership position and have the responsibilities of running a company, developing and learning how to be a good leader is essential to having a business filled with passion and provision.

Since companies will rise and fall based on the quality of leadership, you want to make sure your company thrives!

How do you be a good leader?

Companies rise and fall on good leadership. Depending on the quality of the leader and the values of the leader, both of those together radically impact the company. The efficiency, culture, direction and ultimately the success of the company depend on the leadership. That’s why it’s so important to know the aspects that are required for good leadership so that you can implement them in your company successfully. 

First off, Happy New Year! You’ve probably already read a few blogs that are predicting what type of marketing will be the best for your small business in 2015. But, most of those blogs are actually not very helpful. This one however, is not like that at all...which is why you should keep reading!

Inspiration is something that is difficult and challenging to do, especially as a business. Inspiration happens when you don’t just talk about the facts but you talk about what could be and you give hope. In the business world talking about these things can be a bit fuzzy for people because it’s difficult to evaluate.

We all love to be inspired. It is in our nature as human beings. We want to have that fire in our being that give us the motivation to do better and to be better. I am going to give you an example to show how you too can inspire your employees within your business culture. But how do we create that spark in other people? Where do we find this inspiration? The answer is simple. Inspiration can be found everywhere.

Inspiration. It’s an abstract word that comes in many forms. The value from it comes when you motivate your customers to want your product or service and they continue to talk about it. Inspiration is often planned, but many times it comes in the form of spontaneous “aha!” moments. These moments don’t have to come to you through careful consideration, but can happen in your passion and provision company by deciding today to take 3 easy steps to become more inspirational to your customers and have a successful small business.

How do leaders and companies inspire others? There are so many ways to inspire and it comes in many forms. For business leaders, who are growing a business with both passion and provision, the two groups of people that need to be inspired are:

Your employees and staff

Your customers

When you, as a leader, are able to inspire your staff and inspire your customers, you have the opportunity to grow your business and be successful.

Are your customers truly happy with the product or service you are providing them? Are you doing it better than your competition? Do you even know where you stand when it comes to delighting your customers? Regardless, here’s a secret; you can always be better.

If you in fact want to be the best and have customers return over and over again, you will need to continue to learn, train and evaluate your small business. Many small business owners have the mentality of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” While that may have some truth to it, it can also leave you behind the competition and ultimately impact your success in a negative way.

Sometimes your best just isn’t good enough when you’re trying to get new customers. That’s when you need some momentum to push you forward into the realm of closing customers before they lose interest and turn to your competitors. But how do you do this?

Maybe you think you're doing a really great job at this inbound marketing thing. You’re attracting people to your company website by blogging 3 times a week, actively posting on social media platforms, and you think your keyword strategy is accurate. You’ve even started converting some of your website visitors with your stellar calls-to-action that entice them to click and fill out the form to download the helpful content your staff has created. But then these leads seem to vanish into thin air and you’re left wondering how you can hold onto them and close them as customers. Keep reading to learn three key things that you should be doing.

So many marketers set goals of increasing website traffic, getting more visitors to your website and so on…

These are important goals when using internet marketing for your small business, especially when you implement inbound marketing strategies. This is all fine and dandy and a really great place to start if you are just getting on the web or if your website isn’t attracting visitors at all. But increasing lead conversion rates is where you will start to see a real impact on your ROI and allows you to grow your business full of passion and provision.

So, what if you have 2000 people visiting your website each month? The real question becomes, “where are the customers?” As internet marketers we work really hard to make our client’s websites as “findable” as possible as people use search engines to research products and services. Here at Half a Bubble Out, we do this for our clients through the attracting stage of inbound marketing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a type of marketing that would give you the competitive edge that you need to take your successful small business full of passion and provision to the next level? Normally competitive edge requires having more money budgeted towards marketing. What if I told you that this type of marketing will allow you to compete with the big guys in your industry? Before we get ahead of ourselves let’s start with the basics of this special type of marketing.

While I’m not prone to prognostication I do love to look ahead and consider where we are going as a company and what we need to pay attention to. This holiday season I was reminded of some really great skills that I will need in business in the year ahead. The funny part of this inspiration is where it came from. They say good things sometimes come from the strangest places and this holiday season that’s no joke.

My college daughter, home for the holidays, decided to go all OCD on us and start watching multiple seasons of American Ninja Warrior. The show involves athletes competing on crazy difficult obstacle courses. My hands actually sweat as I’m watching the show. The ultimate goal is to make it to the mother of all obstacle courses, Mount Midoriyama. The competition started in Japan and came to America 6 years ago. To date no American has ever been able to complete the Mount Midoriyama course.

The holidays are a great time for business, big and small, to give it their all when it comes to creative advertising in the form of TV commercials. Advertisers work hard all year long to create ads that will raise brand awareness and promote new products, but there is something about the holidays that bring out the best in advertising for business. The holidays bring out the importance of passion and provision, even in business. 

If being an inbound marketer and content creator has taught me anything, it’s that the only constant is change. As technology gets smarter and people get braver, new strategies are tried. They might fail and that’s okay because that’s how we learn. But they also might succeed, and then you must adapt. In order to survive and thrive in the inbound marketing world you have to know how to write. If you really want to have a successful small business, then you also need to learn how to blog effectively.

I’m no fortune teller, so what I’m sharing with you is purely based on research I’ve done and my own predictions. But whether I’m right or wrong doesn’t really matter, because the points below will help your blog either way.

Now that is it 2015, let’s take a look at your New Year’s resolutions.The Merriam-Webster word of the year for 2014 is culture, which is no surprise being that it is becoming more popular in the business world. When you look at your successful business, do you see a business that has an environment that engages employees and nurtures relationships while focusing on passion and provision? These aspects of business can easily be thrown on the back burner and neglected.