Online Business Battle: Artists vs. Scientists

A while ago, I received an email from a man by the name of Aldo Baker. He was promoting an infographic titled “The Modern Marketer: Part Artist, Part Scientist” and asking me whether I’d be willing to share it with you through my site.

Although 99% of such email gets an automatic “no” or, more often, no answer at all, this one got me thinking. Is online business art or science? Or maybe, a little bit of both?

First of all, let me give credit where credit’s due; here’s the infographic that Aldo wanted me to share (so mission accomplished, Aldo):

artist-scientist

Dangerous SEO – How Not To Fall Victim

And we’re back to SEO again… sorry about this. But it just so happens that I’ve been browsing some of the guest posts I had the privilege to publish in the recent months and I’ve decided to share three of them with you. As you’d have guessed it, they are about SEO. To be more particular, it’s about how easy it is to screw up your site.

I’m sure you can see why this is highly relevant to running an online business. Quite frankly, if you mess up your reputation with Google, then you have very limited possibilities when it comes to promotion on the web. I mean, there’s still paid advertising, social media and direct visits from guest posts, but for most businesses, the loss of Google rankings still equals a huge knockout blow.

seo-posts

The 6 Pillars of Online Business

pillars-sBig sounding headline, isn’t it? Actually, I’m using it to convey the gravity of the topic, and emphasize that running an online business requires you to put some groundwork in place, hence the pillars.

Of course, this is just my take on the matter, and you’ll surely find other entrepreneurs and bloggers who will present a completely different approach. However, if you want to find a good starting point for your online business, I believe this is it.

The trick with online business is that it’s not the most intuitive line of career out there.

I mean, if you want to open a traditional brick-and-mortar café, for example, then even though the venture will still be challenging, you kind of know what you need to take care of in order to succeed … things like: good location, nice interior design, good deals with suppliers, professional team of employees, education and training programs for employees, advertising, good and unique offer, attractive prices, and so on. Listing all these things isn’t that difficult. But what about online business? Well, online business has its own pillars…

How to Create a Custom WordPress SEO Landing Page [Template Download]

SEO-landing-pagesFirst of all, I should probably explain why I’m publishing a post talking in detail about some aspect of WordPress as a publishing platform. It’s because landing pages are often one of the main marketing tools for many online businesses, and since WordPress is the most popular website management platform then it all kind of works together…

The keyword there being “kind of.” That’s because landing pages are not a native functionality in WordPress and you have to do a little digging around in order to enable them for your blog business.

By the way, if you take a look in the archives here, you’ll find a post about custom WordPress archive pages, where I offer my archives template (the exact one I’m using on this blog). Don’t forget to check it out.

What is a landing page?

Some time ago, I published a guest post on Six Revisions about good landing page design. If you’re not interested in the design part then just check out the first couple of paragraphs of the article, where I explain the purpose and construction of a standard landing page.

Does Social Media Work for Online Business?

social-mediaWhere by “work” I actually mean work as a promotional tool/environment.

So, does it?

It most certainly does for the big guys. Amazon, Samsung, Best Buy, Starbucks, and such. They are all mighty popular on social media and use this advantage for promotion every day.

Also, some slightly smaller brands (leaders in their areas, but not mainstream yet) are killing it with social media too. Brands such as: Airbnb, Dropbox, MailChimp, Zynga…

However, what about the small guys? What about us – people who have their solo-businesses and are thinking about integrating social media as part of their promotional arsenal?