Small Business News

To run a successful business in 2019, you need to incorporate both online and offline strategies. For everything from marketing to managing your team, it’s important to know the options and requirements to build a thriving business. Here are a wide array of tips from the online small business community to help you manage both the online and offline parts of your business.

Google My Business recently unveiled “Offers,” a new view for customers that could help local businesses make promotions a bit more prominent. To learn about this new feature and how to effectively take advantage of it, check out this Bright Local post by Jamie Pitman.

Most businesses today exist in both the online and offline world. Even if your customers only really interact with you online, there are some offline concepts that likely impact your day-to-day. If you want to create a winning profile in both of these worlds, read this Startup Professionals Musings post by Martin Zwilling.

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Unboxing videos are a very specific genre on YouTube. These are just what the name implies — people opening products up and talking about what they’re doing and seeing. For small businesses, this specific corner of YouTube is important. Statista reports the video platform has 1.5 billion users around the globe. That number is expected to rise to 1.86 billion by 2021.

Check out these 10 great examples of unboxing videos for small businesses that are great samples for your own online marketing efforts.

It’s important to make sure that you’re using a good camera for any unboxing video like in this example. The iPhone camera has come a long way. Still you might want to consider investing in a camcorder that keeps pace with UHD/4K video and other advancements.

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This video makes our unboxing list because it has a nice clean backdrop. People don’t want to watch an unboxing video from a messy desk or cluttered room. Use a professional backdrop for your video instead to add quality to your video production.

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Being personable and approachable helps to add to the popularity of any unboxing video. Being authentic is in

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Did it feel like everyone in your office this week was a little distracted?

Were you a little distracted?

There’s a reason for that. Monday was the first work day with the new NCAA March Madness bracket. That means workers everywhere — even in virtual offices these days — were really hard at work … picking random college basketball teams to win the big office pool.

That’s right. The most asked question around your office this week was probably: What’s a Wofford?

In new data from Monster this week, we learned that an incredible 31% of employees in American workplaces will spend half their time focused on March Madness. That’s watching games but also all the other hoopla.

If you have any questions about how organized your team is or if they’re working together, watch them put together a tournament pool. Presumably, a legal one, of course.

There were other headlines this week, of course. They’re included in our news roundup below.

Meanwhile, we’re watching VCU. We’ve got them going far.

Amazon recently began a $15 minimum wage for its employees at Whole Foods, but then the grocery store began cutting workers’ hours, according to the Guardian. The multinational e-com

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate on a panel focused on the future of customer experience at Oracle’s MCX (Modern Customer Experience) event held in Vegas.  The panel was a lot of fun because I got to sit on the panel with a couple of old friends and CRM industry thought leaders — Beagle Research managing partner Denis Pombriant, and Ginger Conlon, US Editor of The Drum.

After the panel I spent some time with Ginger to discuss an intriguing question based on the upcoming 25th anniversary of the first digital display ads being run on websites — what has been the most significant moment in the 25 year history of digital marketing?

Ginger and I take a shot at answering that, but as you’ll see below it’s kind of hard to narrow it down to one moment or thing.  You can read our attempt at answering the question with the edited transcript below. To see the full conversation you can watch the video below or the play the embedded SoundCloud player.

Small Business Trends:  I’m here, still at Oracle MCX, with Ginger Conlon, the U.S. editor for The Drum, and a longtime friend. I knew her before she was playing with drums. Thanks for joining me.

Ginger Conlon:  Thank you, Brent. I love the on-the-fly interview.

Small Business Trends:  Yeah.

Ginger Conlon:  Or conversation. Because I’m going to ask you questions, too.

Small Business Trends:  Oh, so you’re going to turn the tables, okay. But that’s okay.

Ginger Conlon:  It’s what I do.

Small Business Trends:  That’s exactly what you do. Matter of fact, I have a big question that you are asking a few people around a really interesting digital marketing topic, because it’s kind of what you do, right?

Ginger Conlon:  It’s what I do, but also this October is the 25th anniversary of digital marketing, and basically kicking off in mid-October with that 25th anniversary of the first banner ad. There is one banner ad that is known to be the first, but there

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