People see or hear advertisements for deals and sales on television, billboards, posters, radio, among so many other advertising techniques. This is typical. But now, many are turning to Facebook and social media for advertising their local business, as well.

Why is it that using social media is suppose to be valuable to a local business marketing campaign? Some people say these networking sites won’t help gain leads or customers, so why bother?

When you're getting setup in business for years we've assumed that any business, no matter what size, needs a website. The underlining principle in that thinking is actually that every business needs 'a home on the web'. These days that home doesn't necessarily have to be a website in the traditional sense. Facebook pages, Twitter profiles, Google + pages, Flickr, YouTube - the list goes on - all these places give your brand (whether that's a business or some other entity) a home and perhaps more importantly, a voice, on the web.

Wordle Cloud of the Internet Marketing Blog - 08/15/08 (Photo credit: DavidErickson)

If you’re considering hiring an internet marketing consultant to help your business succeed in the potentially profitable but highly volatile online market, you need to know a few things first:

1. The consultant isn’t a genie in a bottle
2. You get what you pay for
3. You’re in control
4. Traffic isn’t everything
5. Internet marketing isn’t evergreen

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Royalty-free images can be expensive by nature. However, in return they offer tons of quality value and increase the significance of your online content. Webmasters and bloggers have been using royalty-free images for years as a way to increase traffic to their sites and blogs. The reason it works so well is because these images are generally very detailed, unique, and high exclusive.Well, depending on where them determines how exclusive they are.

Timewasters are always present in every workplace. Today, our modern timewasters are the online ones. However, instead of letting these biggest timewasters distract our work performance, we can turn them into powerful productivity tools.

Below are a few of the biggest online time wasters along with some suggestions on how to turn them into productivity tools.

In today's economy it is becoming increasingly popular for people to run their businesses from their homes. This is perhaps not surprising considering the many savings and lower overhead expenses that home businesses make possible. However, running a business from your house poses the question of what kind of technology is needed in your home to run your business successfully. Most people would agree that one of the basics is a fax number and a means of accessing a fax service. Today more and more home business owners are concluding that online faxing services are the best way to meet their faxing needs. This means using your Internet connection to send faxes as email attachments (such as PDF) or by other formats through an online fax account. Here are three of the major reasons why it is becoming increasingly common for home business owners to choose online faxing services over the traditional office fax machine :

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Making a website usually isn’t the hardest thing in the world, but there are a lot of things to keep in mind if you want an effective website that is able to convert visitors and easily ranking in the search engines. This will require you to actually look at your website like a visitor and be willing to make changes so you can have the best website possible. Consider the following items;

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Sometimes when people ask me what I do for a living I’m tempted to simply say “everything”.  Anybody who starts out on the rocky, but rewarding, road to self-employment will know the feeling.  Whether you simply work for yourself or run a small business your ‘core’ work is usually only the start of it.  For those working alone the list, apart from the actual job, usually includes being the cleaning staff, the secretary, the HR manager, the catering staff and your own accountant.  Most of these jobs I’m relatively comfortable with, apart from the last, which has a tendency to make my blood run cold.  I’m a writer and I love words, but numbers and I have had a long and bitter relationship which stretches back into the distant past when I was always last in the class to learn each of my times tables.  But keeping up with accounts is crucial, not only for the obvious reason – cash flow – but depending on the size of company you run, for VAT, tax and payroll purposes.  The latter being a particular focus of attention as far as your staff are concerned.  Well presented, accurate accounts can be valuable in other areas of business life too – from your client’s perspective professionally presented invoices are an indication of your attitude and from a bank’s point of view accurate, understandable accounts speak volumes. 

How many times have you been told that the best way to get organized is to use a calendar?  It's good advice, but do you actually know anyone who still carries a paper calendar?  Your smartphone probably has a calendar already installed on it, but additional calendar apps are available that can help you sort and sync your schedule to make you more productive.

Calendar apps are a great tool to for students studying at business school, law school, criminal justice school or other any other schools or colleges.  They efficiently organize class schedules, homework, and any other relating tasks. Try out these calendar apps to help you juggle work, school, and your social activities to ensure you'll never miss another appointment.

The sale always begins with a sales lead. Looking for more sales leads is a critical component of any sales professional's job. Without sales leads, you have no new potential customers to market your product or service to. Following are 10 ways to source great sales leads, to help you start your sales process off right: