SMB Acceleration Show

• https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/347149
  
• https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/wendys-just-declared-war-on-mcdonalds-breakfast-mcdonalds-response-was-brilliant.html
  
• https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2020/03/08/google-announces-a-coronavirus-incentive-for-g-suiteand-other-small-business-tech-news/amp/
  
• https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/salesperson-business-owner-credit-cards-cover-personal-hotel-travel%3famp
  
• https://smallbiztrends.com/2020/03/kabbage-insights-hopes-to-keep-small-businesses-cash-positive.html
  

Good Morning Philadelphia listeners on WWDB 860 and everywhere else via the livestream. This is Kevin O’Brien and Wayne Widdleton with the SMB Acceleration Show! If you miss anything or want more information visit our website - https://smbacceleration.com

Using Facebook Messenger as a Small Business. 

• For the small business owners not familiar with Facebook Messenger. What is it?
• What are some tips to help a small business owner get up and running with Messenger quickly?
• If you were starting a small business, how would you look to use Messenger?
• For small business owners who are looking to run ads, would you recommend pairing Messenger with ad spend?
• Beyond  messenger what other tools or assistance does FB offer to small businesses?
• Does FB offer any Messenger or Ad training or certification programs for users? If so how does a small business owner get started?

Small Business News We Covered In Today's SMB Acceleration Show

• https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/hotels/2019/11/22/home-2-suites-mississippi-lets-guests-adopt-dog-right-hotel/4247171002/
  
• https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/v/s/www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2020/02/28/attract-new-customers-small-business-tips/amp/%3famp_js_v=0.1&usqp=mq331AQCKAE%253D#ampf=
  
• https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/small-businesses-are-pushing-trump-to-fight-chinese-counterfeits.html
  
• https://hoodline.com/2020/02/the-hardest-easy-solution-to-sf-s-small-business-crisis-buying-the-building
  
• 
  

Be sure to stay tuned for the entire SMB Acceleration Show today, as we are going to be joined by Bart Mroz CEO of Sumo Heavy.

SUMO Heavy is a boutique digital commerce consulting firm with a core foundation of efficiency through process.

We build successful brands and create online retail solutions with proven results.

So if you miss anything today, you’re gonna want to be sure to download the podcast. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Google, Spotify, and more.

So be sure to stay tuned as we are going to get right into it.

In the News:

Small businesses coming up empty on internet searches

Though 90% of consumers use the internet to find local business, many have no website

https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/small-business-coming-up-empty-on-internet-searches

In a world where e-commerce and digital outreach are becoming commonplace in business, it’s rare to find a company without a website.

But according to a study by portfolio company Visual Objects, one-third (29%) of all 30 million American small businesses plan to create a website for the first time in 2020.

Questions for Bart:

1. What’s the best platform for someone looking to start an ecommerce business?
   
2. What advice would you give someone starting out with an e-commerce business?
   
3. Would you spend any time on organic social media or SEO?
   
4. What’s something you see that is missed by most people just starting out with e-commerce?
   
5. What do you think abou Print on Demand POD
   
6. For $1 day in Ads...what platform would you recommend someone using first?
   
7. What are simple mistakes people can avoid when setting up their ecommerce brand.
   
8. Help the listeners out….What’s 1 type of business you think is currently underrepresented on the web
   
9. What’s 1 app or strategy that you recommend to any small business owner?
   

Wayne and Kevin discuss the stresses associated with small business ownership in this week's, SMB Acceleration Show. 

This week's SMB Acceleration Show is an interview with local Small Business Health Insurance and Employee Benefits Broker Joe Walker. Joe is the owner of Dignity Insured, just outside Philadelphia and shares his journey as a small business owner and his innovative insurance program for Amazon DSP 2.0 business owners.  

1. How do small business owners get started offering employees health insurance?

2. For business owners who may be offering some kind of employee benefits, how do they turn that into a complete employee benefits package?

3. As a broker, what are the biggest ways you can help small business owners save money on employee benefits?

4. Benefits of having an employee benefits broker

5. Amazon FBA Insurance program - How Joe beats Amazon's preferred vendor by $100 per employee per month.

We have a great show ahead today. We have an amazing guest, Birgit Leuders, who’s a solopreneur who's looking to grow brand awareness for her business while establishing strong marketing channels. 

About Birgit's Business: BirgitCare:

BirgitCare is a holistic approach to improving your well being through the interconnection of Body, Mind and Spirit. Treating the whole person rather than separate body parts, one’s Health and Well-being can greatly flourish.  At BirgitCare you will receive a customized wellness improvement plan based on a private personalized evaluation. A traditional observation tool called Iridology will be used during the consultation. A nutritional and physical lifestyle evaluation is also included with every initial visit and will help direct you towards improving you overall health.
Birgitcare’s approach is to help the body to utilize its own healing power.

We have a great show ahead today. We’re gonna be building on last week’s show and get small business owners ready to accelerate their business growth in 2020.

Today’s show is going to be a focus on promoting your blogging efforts and the importance of the customer journey/buying experience to a business. 

So what is the Customer Journey?

Let Wayne explain...

Hello this is Kevin O’Brien and Wayne Widdleton with the SMB Acceleration Show!

Before we get into today’s show….

We have a great show ahead today. We’re gonna be building on last week’s show and get small business owners ready to accelerate their business growth in 2020.

Today’s show is going to be a focus on creating images for your blogs and social media.

Blogging is still highly effective and still not enough businesses are utilizing this timeless strategy.

Should I use type in my posts? How do videos rate vs still photo’s? Where can I access free images if I can’t create my own? What platforms are best to use?

1. Canva
   
2. GetStencil
   
3. PicMonkey
   
4. Adobe Creative Suite - Mobile Apps.
   

First, let’s discuss how small business owners can get started with blogging in 2020.

If you don’t have the ability to blog on your current website you’ll need to Decide on a blogging platform or a website platform which offers the ability to have a blog. There are numerous excellent options such as Wix, Squarespace, Wordpress, and Blogger. 

It's all about Consistency and Content.

Local Small Business Blogging Topics

1. Community & Local News
   
2. Local Events
   
3. Sponsorships or Volunteer Work
   
4. Guides to Local Events
   
5. Local Resource
   
6. Review Local Businesses
   
7. Interview Local Business Owners or Townspeople
   
8. Best of Lists.
   

B2B Blog Ideas

1. Interviews
2. Book or podcast review
3. Testimonials
4. Industry News
5. Company Events
6. Your Employees

1. Adobe Analytics Findings on Small Business Saturday
   
   1. More people are shopping on their phones. Adobe said Sunday that smartphone revenue made up 41.2% of all e-commerce revenue on Saturday. That is up 22% from a year ago.
      
   2. Shoppers, many of them using smartphones, spent $3.6 billion buying online from small businesses on Saturday.
      
   3. Adobe Analytics, which tracks online sales, says that’s up 18% from a year earlier
      
2. NY Post Article
   
3. These are the top goals American small business owners want to achieve in 2020   -https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2019/12/06/these-are-the-top-goals-american-small-business-owners-want-to-achieve-in-2020/amp/
   

The study of 500 US small business owners found their top objectives for 2020 include substantially increasing revenue and growth and reaching new customers.

Restaurant Choice - How Next Gen Voice Assistants need to improve Customer Experience - choosing a bad restaurant instead of a good one

Every report in Analytics is made up of dimensions and metrics.

Dimensions are attributes of your data.

For example, the dimension City indicates the city, for example, "Paris" or "New York", from which a session originates. The dimension Page indicates the URL of a page that is viewed.

Metrics are quantitative measurements. The metric Sessions is the total number of sessions. The metric Pages/Session is the average number of pages viewed per session.

The tables in most Analytics reports organize dimension values into rows, and metrics into columns. For example, this table shows one dimension (City) and two metrics (Sessions and Pages/Session).

:

Users: People interact with your property (e.g., your website or app)

Sessions: Interactions by a single user are grouped into sessions.

Hits: Interactions during a session are referred to as hits. Hits include interactions like pageviews, events, and transactions.

A single user can have multiple sessions, and each session can have multiple hits, as illustrated below:

1. YouTube is 2nd largest search engine in the world
   
   1. Importance of understanding the type of searches on YouTube. Lots of people looking hot to do things/answers to questions.
      
   2. Why an ad budget should be used for every video. Even $1 - $3
      
2. Optimizing your Youtube videos.
   
   1. When you’re done shooting the video make sure that you rename the filename with relevant keywords (ideally you will using the keywords in your title of your blog post, but you may not have decided on this yet.).
      
   2. Youtube titles have a 100 character limit and the most important keywords should begin the video title. Some good words to include in titles are “How To” “:About” “Understanding”
      
   3. The video description field allows for a maximum of 5,000 characters. The description should include a summary of the video along with a link to additional resources like the Industrial Investments  website, any relevant links mentioned in the article,
      
   4. Tags can use up to 120 characters, so it’s best to start with the most relevant tags and then add them in order of importance.
      
   5. Add annotations
      
   6. Create a “channel trailer” explaining the video blog (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3026513?hl=en%20feature)
      
   7. Update all your email signature files with a link to your new video podcast episode Add a new Link To Your Video In Your Email Signature
      
      1. If using GMail/G Suite it’ll show a thumbnail for a video link.
         
3. Promoting Your Videos
   
   1. Email your mailing list (Become An Industrial Insider Insider List)
      
   2. Update your email signature to include a link to the video blog
      
   3. Share YouTube Video via email, Google+ and Twitter
      
   4. Upload video to Facebook page directly and share
      
   5. Update your Twitter profile to include the link of the latest episode
      
   6. Share your post image on Pinterest
      
   7. Share in any Facebook groups you belong to
      
   8. Buy Facebook Ads targeting a narrowly defined audience ($5 an episode)
      
   9. Buy Youtube Ads around relative searches ($5 an episode)
      
   10. Share on LinkedIn in groups, your status and to all your contacts
       

Break - We’re going to take a break...when we come back we’re going to be talking about a question Injabe for Wayne. It came up during Thanksgiving and I’d love to get his thoughts.

Before we go though, just a reminder if you miss any of the show you can catch it on our website smbacceleration.com or anywhere podcasts are found. Also, small business owners check out our listener special.