Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:

• HUGE: Facebook Lets Publishers Contact “Likers”
• Small Business Marketing Strategy: Cultivating Bloggers
• How To Quickly Calculate Facebook Share And Like Counts
• How Using Lots of Keywords Can Help You Focus On One Keyword
• Optimize Your Social Media Pages for Top Rankings – 5 Easy Things You Can Do Right Now
• Turning News Stories Into Search Traffic

P.S. My ebook giveaway is ending this week! Did you enter to win a free copy yet? Details here.

If your business is new or small your reach may not be very wide. Maybe you only have 20 Facebook fans and a few dozen people on your newsletter. One way to get the word out is to have a brand with a wider reach promoting your contest. That’s why I want to tell you about Raffle Dog today.

Raffle Dog gives away prizes to its fans based on their participation in their “raffles”. Fans are able to enter to win each contest up to 5 times. They can leave a comment, follow Raffle Dog on Twitter, Tweet about the contest, post to Facebook about the contest, or “like” Raffle Dog on Facebook. If the company that donated the prize has Twitter or Facebook then fans get extra entries for liking the contest sponsor on Facebook or following the sponsor on Twitter.

Raffle Dog selects a random winner after 3 days.

Raffle Dog works well because it makes clever use of social media, encouraging contestants to promote the contest on Raffle Dog’s behalf. Although the site is relatively new, contests are already drawing hundreds of entries!

Want to learn to create awesome viral contests like this? Pick up my new ebook 45 Contests. I am also giving away a free copy , details here.

Want to host a competition but lacking in the techie resources department? Luckily, there are some great websites and aps out there that do most of the work for you. One of these resources is I Beat You.

I Beat You allows you to create virtual competitions for your fans. You can have them submit their funniest pictures, their best jokes, whatever you like. I Beat You will collect entries and allow people to vote for a winner.

Creating a contest on I Beat You is also totally free! That makes it a great solution for a cash-strapped small biz owner.

In my new e-book, 45 Contests, I wrote a chapter on how celebrity gossip blog, Popeater, used I Beat You to produce entertaining user-generated content that drove traffic and increased brand awareness.

You can win a free copy 45 Contests. Details here.

One of the great things about contests is that they are terrific for attracting website traffic and getting people to link to your website. In my new ebook 45 Contests, I’ve created a list of 40 places you can easily get links to your contest, pretty much guaranteed. These sites will bring you both traffic and link juice to improve your search engine optimization. Today I’m going to share 5 of these resources, but if you want the full list, you’ll need to get my ebook.

Contest Girl
This site lists tons of contests so it may be hard to get noticed but this site has considerable traffic at over 226,000 visitors monthly. Submitting your contest is easy, there’s a form right here.

Contest Hound
This site offers the option to pay for a featured listing, but if you want a free one, you just have to link back to them. You can submit your contest here.

Online Sweepstakes
This is the mother of all sweepstakes directories, with over a million visitors monthly. It will bring you traffic in droves. You’ll have to create an account to submit your contest.

Sweeptakes Advantage
With over 538,000 visitors monthly, this site is a great place to get the word out. You’ll have to create an account there to submit your contest.

Cashnet Sweeps
By far, this site has the easiest submission form. You just have to provide a link to your contest page.

Don’t forget you can win a free copy of my ebook. Details here.

P.S. Check out Miss Malaprop and Makery’s reviews of the new book

I’m excited to launch my first ebook: 45 Contests. To celebrate I’m kicking off contests week here at Smaller Box. All week long I will be sharing contest-related resources and running a contest of my very own. First let me tell you all about the new ebook: 45 Contests is a 52 page ebook that explores promotional contests in depth and provides 45 real world examples of successful promotional contests. My ebook explains each contest in detail and explains how the contest sponsor benefited from the promotion.

Read Meylah’s Review of 45 Contests

Within the book you’ll find:

• 11 factors you must consider before launching a contest
• 8 different ways to promote a contest
• A master list of 40 places you can easily get links and traffic for your contest
• Tactics for encouraging people to become fans on Facebook without breaking Facebook’s promotional rules
• Top notch examples of how you can use contests to:
  • increase brand awareness
  • improve customer engagement
  • improve your SEO
  • drive social media connections
  • score media placements
  • encourage customer loyalty and brand affinity
  • increase your website traffic
  • develop better products
  • grow your mailing list
  • drive sales
  • reinforce your branding

Special thanks to those that made this book possible. Including:
Rosamond Gifford Zoo
Apartments.com
Geben Communication
Strategic Guru
ChiZine Publications
Fox Valley Volkswagen

*      *      *

Win a FREE Copy of 45 Contests

Naturally, the best way to promote a book about contests is with a contest. So I am going to give away a free copy of the book! To be eligible to win do any of the following things. Each action counts as one entry. There are 5 ways to be eligible to win (so you can enter to win up to 5 times):

1. Follow Smaller Box on Twitter (after you do, post to the comments below that you’re following, along with your Twitter name)

2. Fan Smaller Box on Facebook (after you do, post to the comments below that you’ve become a fan)

3. Subscribe to the Smaller Box newsletter, it’s on the top right side of this page (after you do, post to the comments below)

4. Post about the new ebook on a forum or your blog (after you do, post a link to it below in comments)

5. Tweet about this new ebook using this link. (after you do, post a link to your status in the comments below)

I will select a random winner on Monday, August 2nd. If you purchase the book before the contest ends and are selected as the winner you’ll receive a full refund.

Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:

• Smarter Bear’s Thoughts on A True Competitive Advantage
• Interesting Findings on Email Subject Lines and Open Rates – not what one might expect
• EConsultancy’s Guide to Twitter Engagement
• 6 Facebook Applications To Sell Your Products
• Optimize Your Site for “Scent”- make sure visitors actually find what they were looking for once they get to your website
• Build a Backlink Profile on Your Competitors
• Top 10 Myths About The Top Converting Websites – interesting commentary on a philosophical shift from getting immediate conversions to getting repeat customers
• Download: Makery Blog’s New Ebook on Target Markets – also be sure to check out Makery’s new Facebook Page service

Last but not least, my new ebook is coming out Monday. Want a sneak peak? Check out Meylah’s review. More details next week!

Leather Zipper Pouch by PressaRussa

Fellow bloggers Megan Auman and Tara Gentile are in the process of launching a new membership community for creative entrepreneurs called The Creative Empire. Details on how to join are in this post, where Megan and Tara talk about the first topic their community will cover: Marked-Based Creativity. (Side note: their community looks cool, definitely sign up for an invitation to join.)

I’m looking forward to Tara and Megan’s exploration of this subject, especially since it’s one that stirred up a lot of controversy here. One thing I’ve noticed being said around the blogosphere about my post is “Meredith thinks YOU have to choose between art and money, and that they are mutually exclusive”. I do think there CAN be a middle ground. It depends on two things: how far your vision is from what the market wants and how much money you need to make to be happy. I may not have made this super clear, but I tried to allude to that a bit earlier this week, and want to clarify a bit more today.

It’s not about me, it’s about you
It’s very tough for me to say what you have to do without knowing your business. When I wrote my post about art vs. money I introduced the idea of this concept based on my own experiences. I personally found success in catering entirely to popular trends. That is what worked for me. This has to do with two things:

1. I am more interested in financial success than creative freedom, and found I could get more of the former by giving up more of the latter.

2. My own personal taste is not what’s popular.

This doesn’t mean I hate the work my brand produces, truthfully it’s grown on me. We do sell some stuff that I wouldn’t wear, but we also sell some stuff I do like quite a bit. It might be stuff I would’ve scoffed at a few years ago, but it’s like that song you hear on the radio over and over, eventually you start singing along. We do struggle with finding the middle ground. It’s just that for us marketability is always going to win out over our personal taste if there’s a contest. Alright, enough about me, now about you…

Money
How much money do you need to make in order to be happy? What do you need to live on? Can you live on $30k/year? Do you need to make $500k/year to be happy? The more money you need your business to make, the more you’re probably going to have to compromise.

There’s no hard and fast rule and maybe you’ll get lucky, but most likely the more money you need to make, the more you’re going to have to cater to trends. Trends change. What you’re doing now might be selling well and it might be something you love. Consumers are fickle though, if you’re not willing to change your aesthetic to accommodate trends you probably won’t sell as much product when the public’s taste changes.

Your Vision
The more in line your personal taste is with popular trends, the easier it will be for you to stick to your vision and sell product. If you’re easily influenced by trends and this sort of thing comes naturally to you, you’ll probably always be happy with what you’re doing and money will follow.

If your style is completely off the beaten path, you may not be able to sell much of it. If you don’t need to make a lot of money, that’s a workable situation. If you need to make a lot of money, you’re going to have to adapt.

Alright, hope that sheds some light. As always, I love to hear your thoughts.

What happens when someone visits a page on your site? Chances are they get an error page. Maybe you’ve customized the error page with your logo or a message that tells them they’ve gone to a dead link, but there are better things you can do with a 404 page.

1. Share a Coupon Code
Red Envelope shows site visitors a coupon code when they stumble onto a 404 page. This is a great way to turn a disappointing error into a sweet surprise.

2. Make ‘Em Laugh
I Wear Your Shirt’s 404 page is a perfect reflection of the brand personality. Their 404 page is designed for getting a laugh from their site visitors.

3. Get Them On The Phone
Red Tag‘s 404 page encourages site visitors to give them a call. Their 404 page says “call us for directions,” and lists the company phone number. Getting customers on the phone is a great way to put a personalized touch on the transaction, and help them place their order before they get frustrated and leave.

4. Help Them Find Their Way With Search
Merge helps customers get back on track when they get lost. Their 404 page directs the visitor to their site search so that customers can easily find what they’re looking for.

When small business owners talk about what they want out of their marketing efforts, the top thing people say is “more sales.” While more sales is always the idea, this answer sort of ignores the forest for the trees. A truly strategic marketing plan isn’t focused simply on immediate sales, it’s focused on overall brand growth, which later translates to a big cumulative effect in terms of sales.

When you develop a marketing campaign, try to think about what you want to gain from it, other than sales. Here are a few objectives to consider:

1. Goodwill in the Community
Sometimes companies do things to promote goodwill in their community. It can be sponsoring little league or raising funds for a charity. These sorts of efforts won’t necessarily draw lots of immediate sales, but they associate your brand with something positive and foster brand awareness and brand affinity so that people will patronize your business eventually.

2. Press
Getting media placements is a great way to raise brand awareness and online placements can improve your SEO by providing you with valuable link juice. Sometimes media placements do drive immediate sales, other times the results are delayed.

3. SEO
Getting links and writing high-quality, original content for your site is the way to get search engines to notice you. The idea is that the search engines will bring traffic and that will in turn bring sales. Most of the traffic probably won’t result in sales, but that’s fine. Each person that finds your site becomes a person who knows about your brand.

4. Buzz/Word of Mouth
Brands often do things just to get people talking about them. You might create a viral video or host a giveaway. This sort of thing doesn’t necessarily drive people to make immediate purchases but it gets your brand noticed and talked about, which can drive sales in the future.

5. Brand Affinity/Consumer Engagement
Sometimes companies do things to get their customers to like them a little more. These types of campaigns encourage customer loyalty and positive word of mouth. A company might ask fans to help name a new product. Ben and Jerry’s has a free ice cream day every year. These types of activities make customers prefer your brand and engage with your brand. It builds a better relationship with your fans and keeps them shopping with you.

6. Brand Awareness
If people haven’t heard of you, they can’t shop with you. When Budweiser puts a billboard on a highway, they of course do not expect people to pull over immediately and buy a 6-pack. The idea is to get people to think about the brand so that when it’s time to make a purchase decision, the brand will come to mind.

7. Social Media Connections/Newsletter Sign-ups
Getting permission to market directly to people via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. is a huge deal. These types of connections can lead to a consistent stream of sales over time. When you do things like give away a gift card each month to one of your newsletter subscribers, the idea is to get newsletter subscribers, who will hopefully eventually buy stuff. The idea isn’t that all of those people will immediate start opening their wallets. These sorts of campaigns can be a bit of a numbers game. If you have 5,000 Facebook fans and every time you send out a coupon 1% buy something you’re now getting 50 sales each time you send out a promotion on Facebook. It may have taken a couple of years to amass the 5,000 fans and during that entire time your sales may have been a slower trickle from that source. The idea is to see gains over time.

One final thing to keep in mind: all of these marketing objectives tend to feed each other. You can focus on SEO and generate word of mouth. You can aim for brand awareness and end up with better SEO as people link your site once they’ve discovered it. All these different marketing objectives work together to help propel your brand towards success.

Goldilocks print by AntheaArt

The issue of target market comes up a lot and it definitely was touched on during the discussion of designing products for fun vs money.

One comment I saw in response to my article on products for fun vs money was that you can do any products for fun, you just have to find the niche that likes what you’re doing. To that I say “sort of.” The trick with having a successful line is having a target market that’s specific enough that you’re not competing with the whole world, but large enough that you’ve got a big enough pool of potential customers to make a living.

What this means is that there might be only a few dozen people that would be willing to pay $1,000 for a painting of Babe Ruth that you made from your own blood. That’s not very many people. You might love making Babe Ruth paintings with your own blood, but it’s not going to make you rich. It’s too narrow of a niche and you’re not going to sell much. Conversely, you may love making beaded bracelets, but a string of beads is a fairly generic product that has a very broad audience and tons of competitors. Having a product that is so broad and common may make it tough for you to succeed. You’d probably need to narrow things down a bit by maybe having sports team colored bracelets, or maybe your beads are special because they’re made from eco-friendly materials.

So what makes a product just right? How do you know if you’ve found something niche enough to eliminate a lot of the competition but not so niche that there’s no customer base? Here are a few things to consider, Goldilocks.

1. How big is the market for it?
How many people, realistically, would buy what you’re selling. Are there hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Are there magazines dedicated to the kind of people who might buy your product and if so what’s the circulation like? Are there websites dedicated to the kind of people who’d buy your items? How much traffic do they get?

Imagine you want to sell organic crib linens. Your market is eco-conscious parents. That’s a fairly specific niche. Not all people have babies. Not everyone with a baby cares about having organic linens. On the other hand, you can see that there are quite a few publications and websites geared to eco-friendly parenting. It’s definitely a sizable enough market to move some product. If you google “eco-friendly parenting” you’ll probably find quite a few places to advertise. So far so good.

What’s the competition like?
Having too many competitors can be a problem. If you haven’t found a specific enough niche then you’re competing with everyone and chances are someone can do your generic item cheaper, faster or better.

To go back to my example, crib linens is a huge market, a search for crib bedding on Amazon gets me over 20,000 matches. Yikes! Organic crib bedding narrows the field to just 620 matches. It’s a more manageable amount of competition, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re positioned to make your millions.

What’s your USP?
To truly make your brand a success, you’re going to need a unique selling proposition that appeals to your target market. Are your products the cheapest? Maybe you can sell the most affordable organic crib bedding. Are your linens the softest and most luxurious? Do you have the largest selection of colors?

Chances are someone else is selling something fairly similar to your own products, so you need a way to distinguish yourself among your target audience. Take a hard look at your product offerings and try to determine what features or benefits you can offer that no one else has.

If your sales aren’t where you think they should be, go over the points above. Research the size of your potential market, research the competition and take honest stock of whether you have something to offer that’s unique from the competitors. If you’re failing on any one of these points it might be time to reconsider what you’re selling.