Small Business News

Content marketing is overwhelming: There’s a ton of content to create and amplify, a lot of trends to keep in mind and a lot of tools to try.

Content marketing is one of the fastest moving industries.

These days a digital marketer has to balance social, content, email, and other inbound marketing tactics.

Here are 9 content tools to help.

CoSchedule is a platform I have been using for a long time, and I love it. It makes planning content and scheduling it on social media so much easier. It works as a WordPress plugin, creating a section in your dashboard where you can plan posts, assign tasks, give details, schedule posts to auto-publish, and update social media.

This has not only cut down on content marketing tasks for me, but it has made running a team easier, and editing tasks easier.

TextOptimizer is the tool that drives my whole content creation process: From ideation to search optimization.

It starts with “Topic ideas” providing you with the list of popular questions in your niche.

Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/fiQFCgnaHqw/9-tools-for-more-effective-content-marketing-campaigns-in-2019.html

When a PC manufacturer announces business laptops starting under $1,000 it will get the attention of small business owners. If the manufacturer is Lenovo and the laptop includes the ThinkPad line, their ear perks up even more.

Lenovo says the ThinkPad L390 and L390 Yoga have been updated to give small business a reliable and durable device which is also affordable. The update includes Intel’s latest Whiskey Lake 8th-gen processors, which will be a first for the ThinkPad L-series of laptops.

Starting at $659 for the L390, and $889 for the L390 Yoga, it is a price well within the budget of many small businesses. Moreover, this price comes for one of the better-known computing workhorses in the business sector, ThinkPad.

In the press release Lenovo said it made the updates in part to respond to the needs of IT and a workforce which needs to be more agile.

It goes on to say, “Workplace transformation initiatives are in full swing, responding to the desires of energized and dynamic end-users. New workspaces are all about collaboration areas and greater end-user mobility which promote interaction and productivity. Such spaces require technology that enables more flexibility and creativity.”

Features of the ThinkPad L390:

Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/eUzpWmIRsVM/thinkpad-l390-series.html

Think of cash flow as the blood running through the arteries of your small business. You use it to do those important things that keeps everything moving like buying stock, covering expenses and paying staff.

Small Business Trends contacted several experts to get a complete overview of what cash flow is and why it’s so important to your enterprise.

Basically, this is one of the best bellwethers for your small business. It shows the money that your small business has in the pot after paying out all the different debts and draws on your money. Cash flow gives you a good idea if you’re in a position to expand.

Stefanie Ricchio, a CPA/CGA, Author and Professor, further defined cash flow and some of the economic rough patches that make paying attention to it so critical.

“Cash Flow or what is commonly referred to as Working Capital is the heart of any business,” she writes.  “Without it a business cannot survive.  Many small business owners make the mistake of spending w

Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/_QcRT_vwT2Y/what-is-cash-flow-small-business.html

The holiday shopping season is in our rear-view mirror—and there’s reason for retailers to celebrate. Consumer spending for holiday 2018 hit a six-year high of $850 billion according to the Mastercard SpendingPulse report. Online shopping grew 19.1% year over year. Overall, retail spending growth was propelled by strong sales of apparel (up 7.9% from 2017) and home improvement (up 9%).

What can retailers take away from this year? Here are 5 things we learned in 2018.

1. Smart retailers incorporate bricks and clicks

Brick-and-mortar retailing is far from dead. In fact, the most successful retailers incorporate both online and offline sales channels. Mastercard’s report concludes that consumers have reached a “tipping point” where they’re equally comfortable shopping online or off, on mobile or on desktop. Shoppers don’t care how they get what they want—as long as they get it.

Lesson: If you don’t offer both e-commerce and a physical store, this is the year to start. Amazon

Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/X7QdJ0zGXII/2018-holiday-retail-trends.html