Reprinted with Permission Courtesy of New Business Minnesota ©2014 – www.newbizminn.com

December 2011

April 2014 The Monthly Resource Guide For Startup Businesses

Projecting Your Image

Your image is an essential currency that’s as good as gold. You’re able, capable. creative and committed to succeed. This team of experts has great ideas on how you can project an image that says you are up to any challenge: Doug McCaustland and Tom Van Delist, Heartland Payment Systems; Jill Gibson, Softech Solutions LLC; Maria Verven, VERVE P.R.; and Dave Meyer, BizzyWeb

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Publisher’s Note:Every startup business has a unique challenge beyond merely launching: being underes-timated. You’re new, small and people will think you’re untested. Like every new business that’s come before, you overcome this by working harder and smarter than your more es-tablished competition.

To assist you, we assembled this team of business leaders to share their expertise on how you can look larger to the world: integrate your web and social media efforts, start taking credit cards like the big guys, harness the power of your client database, and create content for your web or social meda efforts that get results.

Projecting Your Image

By Dave MeyerBizzyWeb

Projecting the right image to your customers is one of the best ways to gain their trust and business.

If you use the right tools, you’ll present your company as a professional solution provider and a trusted resource. Luckily, there are pro-quality tools available for al-most every budget. Here are some keys to building your brand the right way:

Set your strategy. When you know who you’re looking

for it’s much easier to create something that meets their needs. To get started, describe your ideal customer and what makes them want to work with you. Make your message simple, clear and memo-rable, and use it for your search terms or keywords. Build those keywords into all your online marketing.

Build your brand. Spend a few bucks to hire someone to

create your logo. Consider adding your tagline or a catchy phrase to your logo to make your company easy to remember.

Build a great website. The first place your prospects and cus-

tomers will go when they’re considering you is your site. Draw them in by keeping

your site clear, informative, and include clear calls to action.

Choose a short, easy to re-member domain name, and go with a “.com” address if possible. If your preferred domain is already taken, check to see if it’s available at auction and consider bid-ding if it’s for sale. Domain-tools.com offers a great, free “domain suggestions” tool. You can get cheap hosting on your own and suffer down-time and frustration, or hire a company like BizzyWeb to host your site for just $25 per month.

Spend time on web design. Hire someone who knows what

they’re doing. “Website tonight” or hacked-together designs look like you don’t believe in your company enough to invest in it, and your prospects will de-cide if they’ll do business with you inside of 10 seconds of visiting your site.

For simple, inexpensive and impressive designs, consider using an open-source tool like WordPress to create your site. If you’re technically inclined, you can put a great site together for cheap. To project the best image and fast-track the process, hire a professional developer to make your site perfect. The time you save hiring a pro is time you’ll be able to use mak-ing sales, and you’ll fill your sales funnel faster with a site designed to convert visi-tors to leads.

Make sure you can be found. Spend some time on search engine

optimization. Tools like WordPress make this incredibly simple, but in general the more often you update your site the high-

Call To ActionTo learn more about how to “Generate Buzz Without Getting Stung,” check out BizzyWeb’s New Business Minnesota spe-cial. We’re offering New Business Minne-sota readers deals on websites, social me-dia set-ups and hosting. Go to BizzyWeb.com/nbm to see this 120-day promotion.

Project the Right Image with a Professional Website and Social

BizzyWeb Continued on Next Page

er you’ll rank in searches. Make it easy to reach you with obvious links to your email, phone, office location and social media accounts. And register for free with Google+ Local to automatically get top billing with nearby customers.

For your email, use your own domain (not Gmail, Hotmail or AOL). Use depart-ment names for official correspondence: for sales requests use sales@yourcompany.com, etc. Be sure to use an email signature that includes your contact information and tagline.

Participate in Social Media. The web isn’t the only place your cus-

tomers will find you. Be where your pros-pects and customers spend their time, and make it easy for your fans to recommend you to others. Facebook offers free Com-pany pages, and you can set up your web-site to cross-publish news and information from your website to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter automatically. You can re-serve your own username (e.g. facebook.com/bizzyweb, google.com/+bizzyweb) to make your page easy to find. Post your

profiles on LinkedIn (via a Company Page) and Twitter (with a custom background), and either search for instructions or hire a professional to set everything up for you.

Finally, make sure you use your new online identity everywhere, including your business cards, brochures and email campaigns. The easier you are to find, and the more you share about your compa-ny, the faster your company will grow to match your online reputation.

NBM

Dave Meyer owns BizzyWeb, a 15-year-old Minneapolis-based com-pany that creates WordPress-powered, mobile-responsive websites that publish to social media with a single click, sav-ing businesses time and money. Dave frequently speaks on social media topics, and hosts webinars every Wednesday on social media topics at bizzyweb.com/bb. He can be reached at (612) 424-9990,

sales@bizzyweb.com facebook.com/bizzyweb, or twitter.com/bizzyweb

Reprinted with Permission Courtesy of New Business Minnesota ©2014 – www.newbizminn.com

By Jennifer EvavoldEvident Marketing Inc.

Whether you know it or not, you’re always marketing your business. You do it every time you hand

out a business card, introduce yourself to a prospect, send an email or even answer the phone. To be effective, however, your mar-keting efforts need to be part of a grander plan.

Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs have a random or haphazard marketing ap-proach that goes something like this: need a business card, need a logo, so make it up in MS Word; need a website, so download a template and fill in the blanks; need to find new customers, hand out more busi-ness cards.

That may be a harsh assessment, but it is too often the case: an owner fulfilling a need to “do something.” Get card. Get a web site. Meet more people. What is lack-ing is a plan that will lead to achieving a specific goal.

Defining TargetsWhen a business owner comes to me to

develop a marketing plan, we begin by de-fining who their clients and prospects are, what their marketing goals have been, what marketing campaigns have been tried, what has worked or not worked and how past marketing efforts align with their goals. That helps establish a base line of where the company is at. You can waste a lot of money chasing such poorly defined targets.

I help them refine their definition of customers to identify specific characteris-tics of clients and prospects. It’s more effec-tive use of your marketing dollars to deliver your message to a strong prospect 10 times rather than use a scatter shot plan that hits 100 customers just once. You can’t do that without specifics.

What’s in a marketing plan?It’s a well thought out plan to help you

achieve your business objectives through a mix of marketing tactics. The plan should be meaningful, actionable and within your budget. This helps us to set priorities so we can build a strategy and choose the best medium or channel to deliver your mes-sage to your audience. By “channel,” I’m re-ferring to avenues of delivery: trade shows, advertising, direct mail, person-to-person sales, public relations, web, email, all social media and many others.

Three components make up the plan:1 — Business Objectives: It all starts

here. Know your big picture business goals and break them down to manageable piec-es. Write down your financial goals and de-termine the path of least resistance and big-gest gain to achieving them. What do you need your customers to do in order reach your sales goal?

Example: In the 1970’s Arm & Hammer achieved financial goals by creating a new market for baking soda – convincing cus-tomers to buy it for deodorizing their re-frigerators. The same customer would then buy one for baking and one for deodoriz-ing. Certainly, theirs was a strategy of easy reach and high reward.

2 — Marketing Strategy: Determine goals for target audiences, and translate them into messages. Consider the cus-tomer behavior that provides the most fi-

Project Helpful, Consultative Image

with Your Client Database

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with Clients

Call To Action

To learn more about the benefits of work-ing with a Virtual CIO on a project, con-sultation or retainer basis, go to www.softechsolutionsllc.com.

Softech Continued on Next Page

nancial gain and determine what beliefs will drive that behavior. Herein lies your mes-sage. It should be focused and believable through observations you can provide (i.e. data, other customer behavior, product fea-tures, testimony, etc.).

Example: The behavior you want from your customer is to buy your carpet for com-mercial office suites. Your message might be that your carpet is designed for high traffic placement. One point of observation or sup-port you provide is a comparison photo of your carpet and a competitive carpet in two office suite foyers.

3 — Tactical Plan: Lay out a plan for communicating your messages across the most effective delivery channels within your budget. Your message may have sev-eral supporting observations that will help your customer believe it. The support for your message is a factor in choosing the best channels.

Example: For your customer to believe you are an expert and credible resource to them, you list a dozen well-known busi-nesses that use your services. This content is best delivered through a website where your customer has gone to learn more about you, as opposed to a newspaper ad where space is at a premium.

A good plan involves repeatedly hitting your customer with the same message and same identity in order for them to “recog-nize” you. The rule of thumb in radio ad-vertising is to repeat the call to action (of-ten a phone number) three times before the ad ends. Repetition builds memory and variance breaks it. Consistent message and brand identity are important to being effec-tive.

Budgeting and Executing a PlanCreating a marketing budget isn’t as

simple as some might think. It’s not unusual for entrepreneurs to consistently underes-timate the costs. For example, they include the printing and postage costs for a postcard campaign. What they forget are costs associ-ated with design, writing, proofing, list pur-chases, list management, addressing, mail house services, and other services that are needed to complete their campaign.

And executing a plan is harder than many assume, which is why so many businesses put marketing campaigns in their calendars and breathe a sigh of relief. After all, they have something happening in each month and feel pretty good about. What could go wrong?

The reality is that small business own-ers will soon face a marketing deadline and haven’t found time to write a new message for the scheduled email blast. Unfortunately it’s also month-end and they have meetings with the accountant, the bank and three cli-ents. The campaign is delayed. And then de-layed again. And soon is forgotten.

The best marketing plan in the universe is worthless if it sits on a shelf.

The owners of startup businesses often make the mistake of trying to do too many things by themselves to keep expenses down. As they attempt to coordinate a cam-paign, they ought to be asking themselves, “Is this the best use of my time?”

The value of working with a marketing professional is they know what needs to be done, how to do it, how to price it and how to budget it and execute the plan. We keep everything coordinated. I’ve seen owners spend significant money on marketing ma-terials and then have it go to waste because

they were distracted and didn’t take action.

MeasureIt’s always a good idea to track your mar-

keting efforts, though it’s not always easy. Web sites give you lots of opportunities for analytics. You can track activity for each page, link or photo as people browse your site. If you use print ads or direct mail, you can track responses with coupons, 800 num-bers or direct the readers to a landing page on your web site where they can register for something.

It is amazing how many people don’t even do the most basic method of tracking: asking prospects, “How did you hear about us?” The owner may ask, but no one else in the organization thinks to do it. Make sure everyone in the office is ready to track and interact when a measurable marketing tactic is executed.

Common Marketing Mistakes.Knee jerk. In my experience, it seems that

do-it-yourself owners almost instinctively want to create a brochure. I’ve seen people spend money on creating and printing a brochure that they didn’t need and never used simply because they thought they needed one.

Imitate others. Just because you see oth-ers doing something, doesn’t mean you need to. With so many channels for communica-tion today, the smart move is use the one that is appropriate for your message and for your audience.

Too much information. Beware of over-crowded messages. Don’t try and put ev-erything about your company into the mes-sage. Do people really care if the company was founded in 2004? Will they really read all 20 bullet points that are squished into an ad, web page, flier or postcard? The owner may find it interesting, but to the people he wants as customers, it is just distracting. That space is best used hone in on what will make people buy.

ConclusionI strongly recommend working with a

marketing professional to get your plan of action together. I provide my clients with as little or as much help as they need. The right process means setting your goal, as-sessing strategies that fit within your budget and then executing the plan. Ultimately, it is about getting results.

NBM

Jill Gibson, President/CEO of Softech Solutions, Virtual Chief Information Of-ficer services as well as business process analysis, customized contact management software and marketing solutions. She has more than 25 years’ experience i7n data analysis and design, a Platinum Certified Platinum ACT! consultant and appointed to the Business Partner Advisor Council for ACT! Software. She can be reached at (612) 309-5709 or

jill@SoftechSolutionsllc.comwww.SofttechSolutionsllc.com.

Reprinted with Permission Courtesy of New Business Minnesota ©2014 – www.newbizminn.com

Accepting Credit Cards Projects a Good Image

Tom Van Delist Doug McCaustland and John Cummings

Heartland Payment Systems

If you recently started a new business, no doubt you’ve worked hard to present a good image to your customers. You’ve

enticed them with a great looking web site and wowed them with outstanding prod-ucts or services. When it comes time to take payment for those wonderful prod-ucts or services, all this hard work can be wasted if you have to say, “Sorry, we don’t take credit cards.”

When a business doesn’t accept credit cards in today’s marketplace, the first reac-tion by most consumers is probably be ir-ritation. Fewer and fewer people carry large amount of cash these days because they have an expectation that credit and debit cards are accepted everywhere. That’s pretty much true – in the retail and restaurant industries, more than 95 percent now accept credit cards.

Their second reaction will usually be to wonder why you don’t take credit/debit cards. Is there a prob-lem? Are you not credit worthy? Is there something else going on?

To succeed, your business needs to accept payment the way customers prefer and expect. Credit card payment is essentially a minimum ante for staying in the game. When you take credit cards, you project an image of credibility. Customers know you’re committed and had to go through a process to qualify. You’re sol-id. There is an almost automatic trust that consumers associate with businesses that accept credit and debit cards for payment.

Besides, accepting credit cards will improve your cash flow. Rather than wait for a check to clear or arrive in the mail, you’ll get the money in your bank the next business day so you can buy materials on a schedule, pay your bills on time, and avoid bounced checks of your own.

Getting StartedThe first question is who can set you up for accepting credit and

debit card payments? The answer is merchant service providers, or payment processors. There are many different kinds of payment providers, but the important thing to understand it that they pro-vide the electronic link between your business and the many banks that issue credit cards to your customers. In turn, these banks fol-low the rules and procedures established by the credit card brands – primarily Visa and MasterCard.

The second thing to understand is the service fees you pay for the convenience of accepting credit cards. The simplest way of ex-plaining this is that the fees you pay – generally under four or five

percent of transaction totals – are divided among the card brands, the banks and your payment processor. The card brands establish their own network rates and fees, which they collect, as well as the interchange fees that banks collect. These fees can vary depending on the type of card, the type of business you own, and other factors, but they are not negotiable.

Choosing a Processor – What’s Their Billing Model?

Payment processor fees are negotiable, and they use a variety of billing models. In order to know your cost for processing credit cards, you need to understand how the different payment proces-sor pricing structures work. Each month you’ll be getting a state-ment on your transactions. Unfortunately, many businesses we encounter did not understand their invoices or rates when they first signed up. It’s easy to be confused by the details, so it’s worth taking a little time to make sure you understand them. Here’s a quick overview of the main pricing structures that we review with all our prospects.

The “interchange plus” or “pass-through” pricing models are al-ways preferred because they are supposed to pass along the card brand network and bank interchange fees with no markup. This model also provides comprehensive details on every interchange and processor fee to help you manage your account. For example,

Heartland Continued on Next Page

Your Customers Expect It and Your Bottom Line Will Improve

Tom Van Delist, Doug McCaustland and John Cummings; Heartland Payment Systems

you can see if a transaction was downgraded to a higher interchange rate for a particu-lar reason. These rates can differ if a card is swiped in person, handled over the phone or online. With interchange plus, you will see what is actually going on.

Equally important, interchange plus statements clearly separate processor fees from those non-negotiable interchange and network fees – so you can see what your processor is actually charging. Heartland introduced this transparent billing model in the mid-1990s for small businesses, and it has become very widespread among pro-cessors, and very popular in the small mer-chant community. This is the system Heart-land recommends because of its fairness and transparency.

Some payment processors offer a “tiered pricing” system, which is shorter and sim-pler to read but it also hides all the details needed for transparency. The problem with tiered pricing is that network, interchange and processor fees are not clearly separated, so you can’t see the true costs. This makes it easier for processors to increase rates with-out clear explanations, or warnings. We rec-ommend you avoid this billing model.

There is also the “rate plus surcharge” pricing model, which is partially tiered, but is really not much more transparent than the “Tiered Pricing” model. Steer clear of this option, too.

Another thing to watch out for is dif-ferent mobile processing charges. Some processor plans charge more for mobile processing, and some will even hold your “mobile” funds for up to 30 days. There is really no good reason for this. For instance, Heartland offers customers a free app for Android or iPhone smartphones that uses the same interchange plus rate structure you would use at your office or store, with the same next-day payment. This app also has what we call “store and forward” technol-

ogy, which allows you to process cards even if you lose cell connectivity or Wi-Fi access.

Payment EquipmentThere are many types of equipment for

swiping cards or capturing the information in a card-not-present environment these days. Technology has made it possible to ac-cept credit card payments virtually anyplace a business interacts with its clients. Most brick-and-mortar merchants use some kind of stand-alone terminal as part of a point-of-sale (POS) system, but these can be hard wired or wireless. You can also accept pay-ment now using smartphones or tablets. And there are many different systems for doing e-commerce.

To help you sort through it all, we strong-ly urge you to work with a reliable merchant services provider who can help you figure out what will work best for you. Their ad-vice will pay off. For instance, some POS dealers will try to lease you a terminal on a multi-year contract. It’s always much cheap-er, and smarter, to buy the POS equipment, so don’t fall into the leasing trap. And try to make sure you invest in a POS system that is flexible in terms of processor systems – some POS dealers offer systems that only operate on one payment processor system, locking you in.

Customer SupportDo not undervalue customer support

when considering a merchant service pro-vider. If something goes wrong, you can’t get paid! Here are some questions to ask:

How quickly will someone answer the phone?

Do I have to go through a long series of electronic voice prompts before I get through to a human being?

Are your service reps based in the U.S. or somewhere else?

How quickly can a service team arrive on site to fix a serious problem? Are they em-ployees, or out-sourced?

Is service support available 24/7/365? Be sure to ask all the questions, and de-

mand straight answers. Security.

After the Target data security breach last year, we don’t need to remind you how im-portant credit card security is. To address security issues, a few years ago Heartland created a three-part security system that we offer to all our customers. Our system in-cludes EMV chip-based “smart cards” tech-nology, an end-to-end system that encrypts card data so that it is never in a readable form outside of the processing system, and tokenization technology, which puts substi-tute information, or a token, in place of the real card and transaction information stored in computer systems.

Make sure you know what kind of secu-rity a payment processor can provide before making a final decision.

The Bottom Line The first, most important step is selecting

your credit card payment processor. Ask your fellow merchants for recommenda-tions on this, and be sure to ask how long they have been using their processor. All payment processors promise big, but deliver poorly over time. You want a processor that is well established, offers long-term quality service, and provides both interchange plus pricing models and POS equipment flexibil-ity.

To find out more about making smart de-cisions for credit card processing, you can visit the MERCHANT BILL OF RIGHTS at http://www.merchantbillofrights.org/ or a Heartland-sponsored website: www.mer-chantservicesdefense.com.

NBM

The authors of this article are with Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. (NYSE:HPY), the fifth largest payments processor in the United States. Heartland delivers credit/debit/prepaid card processing, mobile commerce, e-commerce, marketing solutions, security technology, payroll solutions, and related business solutions and services to more than 275,000 business and educational locations nationwide. A FORTUNE 1000 company, Heartland is the founding supporter of The Merchant Bill of Rights, a public advocacy initiative that educates merchants about fair credit and debit card processing practices.

John Cummings, Territory Manager, can be reached at (612) 968-4054 or John.Cummings@e-hps.com. Tom Van Delist, Relationship Manager, can be reached at (612) 325-7275 or tom.vandelist@e-hps.com. Doug McCaustland, Relationship Man-ager, can be reached at (580) 319-2772 or doug.mccaustland@e-hps.com. For more information go to www.Heartlandpaymentsystems.com/johncummings

VERVE P.R. Continued on Next Page

Beanstalks and Baby Steps

There’s No Such Thing As Magic Seeds. But Project the Right Image

to the Right Audience and Your Business Will Grow.

By Maria VervenVERVE P.R.

Every business owner I know wants to grow their business quickly – the faster, the better. But there are no

magic seeds, folks. Growing a business takes time and patience.

Here’s a story about a business owner who learned that growing her business re-quired projecting a carefully honed, consis-tent image and message to her target audi-ence day in and day out.

There once was a woman with a big sweet dream: To run a successful business that would help millions of other women. She saw with her own eyes how the product she would sell had helped her 20-year-old daughter.

So she started a business, undaunted by the fact that she lacked adequate funding or know-how about many aspects of her busi-ness. She had boundless energy and ambi-tion, and she truly believed in her vision.

She pulled together everything neces-sary to get her business off the ground, from focus groups to financing, products to packaging, logo to logistics. She got her e-commerce website up and running, opti-mized it for searches and promoted it us-ing social media, P.R. and a keyword-rich blog. She studied the website analytics and watched as her website traffic slowly grew.

But her business wasn’t taking off as quickly as she had hoped. She had antici-pated that her business would grow more rapidly. She had hoped to reach millions of people and become an overnight sensation.

She wanted to wake up one morning and see the proverbial beanstalk out her window.

One day she had a revelation. Maybe there’s no such thing as magic seeds. Maybe her busi-ness was growing just like any normal plant would. Maybe her business was doing exactly what was ex-pected: finding its audience, one person at a time.

She realized that growing a business is like growing a plant. If you water it and take care of it every day, it will grow. You may not see discernable growth every day or even every month, but with careful nur-turing and a big pile of patience, it will grow.

Is This YOUR Business?Maybe you’re just getting your business

off the ground. Or maybe, like the woman in this story, your business is in steady, slow growth mode.

Perhaps you’re even reading this because you’re hoping to gain insights into what will turn your business into an overnight sensation.

Well, there are no magic seeds, folks.

But before you stop reading, I’m going to share some of the criti-cal baby steps, executed consistently, that will help your business grow and suc-ceed, regardless of the type of business you’re in or whether you’re selling a

product or service:

Stay True to Your

AudienceYou have defined

your audience, right? That’s the first and most

important step. You can’t be all things to all people, but if you do a good job of identifying exactly the type of people who need

your product or service, you’re halfway there.

You could even develop audience “personas” that de-scribe each and every one of your audience segments.

These personas are a great way to further understand the types of people who need and want your prod-uct or service, and what drives and motivates them.

Your audience is the most critical element of your business plan, because your custom-ers are the lifeblood of your business. Listen to them, learn from them and give them what

they need. Small focus groups of 10 to 15 people

can really help you understand their issues and gain insights into what they want and how you can meet their needs.

Go to Where Your Audience IsThere are literally millions of sites where

you can make your mark. But unless you have unlimited time (who does?), you’ll want to be selective about where and what you post online.

The 80-20 rule definitely applies to post-ing online: 80 percent of the time, your leads will come from just 20 percent of the chan-nels.

So be smart about which channels you’re using to engage with your audience.

For some businesses, Facebook might be the perfect medium, but for some, it’s a total waste of time. Here’s a good rule of thumb: if talking about your product or service bores folks at a cocktail party, don’t bother with Facebook. And don’t forget about Linke-dIn; it could be the perfect medium for your business.

Every time you post something online, make sure it will reach your key audience. It goes without saying that it must also be pro-fessional, consistent with your brand image and true to your audience’s needs.

If you don’t have a strategy and a plan for where, what and when (how often) you’re posting online, it’s unlikely you’ll be suc-cessful. And that leads us to the next point:

Consistency is Critical

Consistency builds credibility. Credibility builds trust. People want to do business with people they trust. Can you think of a single time you chose to do business with a com-pany you didn’t trust?

But trust is ephemeral at best on the In-ternet. People want to trust you, but the devil is in the details, and any misstep can easily lead your flock astray. Crawl around your website as if you were a new visitor. Are there any broken links? Typos? Fix them. Now. Because if you don’t, your visitors will leave and never come back.

Now let’s get a little more sophisticated. Do you have enough content to build au-thority on your subject? Do you have ‘thin’ pages that have very little text or that don’t match the keywords in your headings and page titles?

You did do research on your keywords to find which are in the sweet spot, right? That’s the only way Google is going to find and reward your site with visitors who are looking for your product or service.

A Change Will Do You GoodBuild it and they will come? In your

dreams.Gone are the days when you could put up

a website, sit back and wait for traffic. Build your site for search, using the best

practices in Search Engine Optimization or SEO and you have a shot at getting traffic to your site.

The key to getting found online is creat-ing content that’s original, using keywords that are in the “sweet spot of search,” i.e., keywords people are looking for but that aren’t ridiculously competitive (the secret sauce of SEO).

A word of caution: do NOT leave SEO to your web developer. They know what your title tags are but unless he or she is also a writer and SEO expert, they have no idea what to plug into those all-important meta tags.

A weekly blog is a great SEO strategy, be-cause Google rewards sites that change of-ten. While your core website content doesn’t change that often, your perspective on your industry, its trends and the latest news does. And that’s exactly what you can blog about.

Keep Watering Your PlantAre you consistently getting your content

out in the webosphere? There are a multi-tude of places to rewrite and repurpose your content so that it’s seen by lots of people, including your current and prospective cus-tomers, as well as the media, industry ana-lysts, etc.

You need to create a content schedule and stick to it. In general, here’s what I suggest:

• Monthly: create a news release and e-mail a brief e-newsletter to the folks on your mailing list

• Weekly: write a blog• Daily: post updates on your social me-

dia pages Keep it up, through thick and thin, no

matter what. Don’t stop watering your plant – not even for a day. And keep looking at your Google analytics, Facebook insights and other stat’s to see what’s working and what’s not.

By the way, the woman in this story is real. This story is mine. The dream was the seedling of my second business, Vaping Vamps, the only e-cigarette brand created by a woman, for women.

And I’d be happy to share the hard-won lessons I’ve learned to help you grow your business.

NBM

Reprinted with Permission Courtesy of New Business Minnesota ©2014 – www.newbizminn.com

Maria Verven is owner and founder of VERVE P.R., an Internet marketing firm that helps small business get found. She can be reached at

(612) 990-7328 or mverven@gmail.com www.verve-pr.com