Google has started a new era in helping businesses large and small protect their online reputation. Their latest update has temporarily limited the functionality of Google My Business or GMB. These changes are designed to help your business rather than hurt.

As I sit at a Starbucks a distance from home, a person named Phil is sitting next to me eating a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich. He starts up a conversation while he is eating, stating he is traveling through the area and owns a paving business in Lombard, Illinois. He's on the road actively looking for bad consumer driveways to make money.

When it comes to getting found, telling your story, and all-around adding to the bottom line, you need to write consistently for your audience. It would be best if you answer the question and not just write to write. Write multiple articles for your website with new ones posted consistently. You write dozens, even hundreds of blog articles to get your information out there.

Press releases can produce major benefits to a business for marketing even when they do not reach major media outlets. You will find both free and paid press release outlets that can help promote your press release. Utilizing both is a key that we always use to gain the largest buzz for our clients. With paid advertising you can feel more confident your PR will reach more people and appear in leading publications. Getting your good word out to news organizations is never an easy business and getting a journalist to write about you is never easy. Without a press release they certainly will not know and with one you stand a better chance of being heard.

Every page you look at on the internet that works comes with a code of 200 (Success). But what are all the codes when you don't get a successful message. The list below is all of the currently known codes used on the internet today.

It's time to learn from the past, move forward, and start increasing your engagement and adding to your bottom line with these ten steps (you can always watch the video!)

Many don't talk politics, not because they don't have something to say or have an opinion. Many don't speak as it's a taboo subject. Some don't fully understand the entire process. I know for myself it is a little bit of each. I want to be an informed American, and I believe others do as well.

Copywriting is all about closing the sale. You use words to convince someone to purchase your product. Imagine you have an article that sells one in a hundred people that makes you a hundred dollars. You modify just the title or a few words to convince someone to buy and move that to two in a hundred. What you've done is doubled your revenue to two hundred dollars. The power of the written word has the potential to add value, educate, inform, and drive revenue to your bottom line.

I am a software developer and a marketer. These are two totally different sides of a mind to use. Thankfully I have multiple voices in my head that allow me to accomplish both successfully and break out of the norm. Being a software developer means I am a nerd, analytical, agile thinking, and an introvert. Being a marketer it means I need to think differently, look at everything, and agile thinking. Everything says 'think out of the box.' I say 'what box?'

For four years now John has been trying to get me to write a blog article about what I do. I specialize in graphic design and eCommerce websites. Maybe in the future I will write something about color theory or minimalism especially when talking about logo design.

There are eight proven mind hacks to get your customers to purchase more, spend more, and add more profits to your bottom line. These are some of the tactics we use for all of our clients with their eCommerce and in-store sales.

Truly the holy grail when it comes to email is getting your email to no items in it and everything completed quickly, accurately, and on-time. But why would having no email in your inbox be such a benefit to you and how can achieve this? Today I will be covering the struggle I had in achieving inbox zero and then how it has increased my productivity, my health (I think so), completed items on-time, and increased overall communication in the company.

Did you know there is a way to reach your local audience without paid advertising and increase your search results? To do it right you need to do the following ten items to achieve success.

Over the past three months we’ve enhanced our system for realtors and real estate agents. I am going to cover the top features we’ve added and outline the top features we’re working on for the next release.

When it comes to having your digital voice heard you need a draw to further reach your audience. Curating great content is one way to show how you are searching and finding content to share with your audience. Then you have truly authentic content that you create to not only showcase who you are but let your voice and brand be heard. We’re going to talk about the later of original content and three types of content you can create to increase your engagement, educate, and showcase your expertise to your audience.

It's amazing how many people with great talent are not being noticed. This is why we've created the Moose Tracks Sellers Club. We want to help starving artists, bands, and those with some truly great ideas make money for their talents.

We are launching a apparel design contest. The design should fit onto a shirt or hoodie or another apparel item. It should scale and be visible at any size. Contest ends on 7/20 at 5 pm CST.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology for managing all your company’s relationships, and interactions with customers, and potential customers.

With every client we make live the Yelp marketing engine kicks off. They’re either contacting us or our clients who then refer Yelp to talk to us. It is this that makes us want to bring into light the costs and what you get for your money. This information will be constantly updated not only on price but the bullets of what you get (or not). Let’s dig into what Yelp is, what it offers, and most importantly how much it’s going to cost you.

As a marketing business, it is our job to help small businesses excel, and gain positive clientele. The reason people choose us instead of other marketing businesses is because, we strive to make peoples lives easier.

Switching from Sendgrid to Mailgun was one of the hardest decisions to do but also one of the best decisions for not only ourselves but our clients. The prices are the same but that is where the similarities end. In this article I am going to list why we switched which is obviously going to be biased as we did switch and why we switched.

Whether you need to find an address, business hours, specials, reservations, or want answers to other FAQ’s, ManyChat is the way to go. Chatbots can be exactly what many businesses need. The only issue is that not a lot of people know what they are. The purpose of having a chatbot is to reduce human interaction when it is deemed unnecessary. A chatbot removes repetitive things and answers questions that don’t need a real person to give an answer to. This provides business owners more time to focus on other areas of management for their company while still providing answers to basic questions that their customers or clients may have. There is a difference between Chatbots and AI.

Many businesses don’t have much of a marketing platform because they think that since they are successful, they don’t need to market. That is actually not true. The best time to market your business is during busy times. The object is to keep business flowing. If your market yourself during busy times, there is good probability that it will produce constant customer flow. If you don’t market your company, you might get a period of time where business gets slow. This is normally the time when people think they should market, so they can bring in customers. However, if you market while you are experiencing good business, those customers will bring in other customers and it helps your business grow and profit.

A good logo is distinctive, appropriate, practical, graphic and simple in form, and it conveys the owner's intended message. A logo should be able to be printed at any size and, in most cases, be effective without color. A great logo essentially boils down to two things: great concept and great execution.

As Facebook makes its move toward groups having a higher presence we have upgraded our social media management to include a Facebook Group as part of our social experience. Facebook Groups though having high importance on Facebook is definitely not for all companies.

When it comes to taking on client needs social media, like the search engines, is constantly changing and evolving. These changes sometimes we love and sometimes we hate. This is one that we're kind of in the gray area. What does this mean for you on building engagement and brand awareness for your business? Glad you asked! There's a ton that this will do to actually help you grow your business, you will be able to build your brand awareness through your website and showcase your awesome company culture through the use of Facebook groups.

I constantly read from experts that get upset over the phrase “Content is King”. Is the phrase over used – yes, to a degree. That doesn’t make the phrase any less true. Your life and your business has a story and that story should be told. We remember stories not only because they are easier to remember than facts but because they resonate with us.

We are living in a time where computers are becoming more engrained into our lives. Some machines are starting to become aware of their surroundings. For many this can be a scary time while others it is truly an exciting time. Change is already taking place and the question is are you, and your business, ready for this change. We all have seen movies like the Terminator where the machine not only takes over the world but destroys all of humanity. This is far from the truth (today) of what is happening, and we are all a determined group of individuals to prevent it from getting out of hand (so we all hope). Machines are here to help reduce the repetitive nature of our lives. It is up to us to determine how we utilize these machines to better mankind as well as augment we mere humans.

It is the ones that push the limits around them that get noticed. There's nothing wrong with being different. In fact, we find those that are different are the ones that change the world for the better and most remembered. This is why we've changed our name to Business YETI from JM2 Webdesigners & Marketing. There are many reasons for this but the biggest is we are not like any other marketing company out there. We are focused on return on investment (ROI) and showing it to you. We never pushed people to realize that half of our revenue comes from paid advertising for our clients on Google, Bing, LinkedIn, and social media. This goes along with our idea we should be a silent partner helping our clients grow.

Online sales are continuously increasing. We know this as we buy more online, those we talk to are buying more online, and eCommerce has become a large focus of what we do as an organization. The problem with all of this is people are still being tricked into bad situations even on sites they expect to be reputable. We are going to cover our most popular tips that will help you buy online safer.

We know that sometimes dishing up thousands for a new website is not an option, especially when you are starting your business. You want your business to be found and you want it to be custom made to promote your business. What you don’t want is to pay for a website that will put you out of business. You want your website to generate business and help you grow without nickel and diming you around every corner.

We create videos for our clients, edit videos they’ve created or had created for them, and we use their videos straight as provided. We often find ourselves using a custom video player or use the YouTube video with the branding turned off. There are several reasons with the top two being increased search engine optimization or SEO and also to relieve the burden from your web server streaming the video. This not only will make your website faster but provide a better user experience.

A few years ago, when we started working with marketing companies, we talked to them about tactics and what the best items to do were when it came to helping businesses grow and be found online without spending tons of money on paid ads. Most of these companies worked with medium-sized businesses while we focus on small business. This brought in a ton of different ideas and topics that helped all of our businesses grow. One highly talked about topic was review and reputation management for companies. The marketing companies we talked to were going “old school” (e.g. postcards, flyers, or letters) as they had specific business reasons and we were moving to the electronic frontier for our small business customers. Both methods are valid and I can say the marketing companies we work with in Illinois and here in Indiana are now all digital for several reasons but it did take them, and their customers, to realize the old school method was making them look like dinosaurs. I am going to look at three ways old-school marketing companies are (or were) doing review management and why it is hurting your business model if you are doing so.

I grew up in the small historic town of Chesterton Indiana. I have been fortunate to see great communities all around the world. Every move I have ever made has shown me a vast array of great communities. Some are struggling and some are vibrant and growing. What I find is the communities that are truly growing all have one thing in common. They have a strong community and even with the big box stores, they buy from local businesses that support their community. I now live in Valparaiso Indiana with my wife and family but get to Chesterton often as it’s just a short drive. I know deep down it’s this support of choosing a local small business before a big box store that makes these communities great and I truly feel good about it.

Although I am calling this small business growth hurdles it actually applies to any business small or large. It is about keeping to your core strengths and not letting them go. This is something every business needs to stay aware of. Being I have never run a large business my knowledge there doesn’t apply beyond working at some of the best large companies in the world. My focus here is on common mistakes business owners make and that can cripple, if not kill, your business. I am going to cover six of the items that I have not only come across but done myself in the past five years. I have overcome each of these and each has taught me several valuable lessons and made us stronger.

We are hearing this more and more from companies talking with us. They ranked high once and now they are dropping and their competitors are ranking higher. These can be local or national companies organically (e.g. free) ranking higher than they and they think it’s because these corporations are outranking them because they are spending money. The answer is yes but not in the way they are thinking. They are ranking not because they are paying the search engines to rank to get those organic listings. They could be paying for ads but that doesn’t measure into the organic listings. They are paying their employees or a digital marketing company to make them rank that way. Let’s take a look and see what a business owner can do to fix this problem.

Our company is going through the biggest change of any growing business. I know there are many ways of phrasing it but I am calling it the “Business Owner Role Transition” and to me, it is the pivotal point for any small business owner that is growing. Many will feel caught in a trap right before or during this part. Many will sell their business when the end reward is just in front of them. They aren’t quitters but quit anyway as they don’t feel they can do it and they really can with that extra needed “push”. Many will not talk to others in the same spot and lock themselves into silos rather than reaching out and talking with those people – not friends, other businesses that you may consider competitors. I also see it as the hardest point in my 30 years of working.

Adobe Muse was created on May 7, 2012, with more than fifteen releases since then. Adobe Muse is a website builder that allows designers to create fixed, fluid, and adaptive websites without having to write any code. The keyword here is “designers”. Adobe Muse was created obviously by Adobe to solve and simplify the web for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices prior to most people even thinking of tablet and mobile devices. Adobe was beyond ahead of the curve with their proprietary solution. It was fast and still is. Muse utilized custom widgets from an online store to make it simple for graphic designers to create websites (e.g. no nerd required).

eCommerce is all about sales. There’s no other way to say it other than “Show me the money”. With that being said when you are doing eCommerce in Northwest Indiana, Chicago, or a small and growing town like Chesterton you need to focus on the conversion of your visitors to buy from you. In this article, we will look at several techniques used when creating descriptions for your products to draw people into purchasing your products.

It’s a new month and the month that kicks off for many business owners the holiday marketing season. Marketing is never-ending. Marketing does routinely pick up at certain times. It is also time we started to think about the end of the year which means shopping, snow, colder weather, and people talking nice and pushing us out of the way for that most valuable holiday find. We don’t like the thought of the cold, but we are all in the service business.

I truly love how in tune the JM2 team is when it comes to marketing and helping companies grow on social media. Yesterday afternoon when I got back into the office late Kyle was wanted to talk about some concerns he has not only with our clients but with social media/digital marketing. At first, it was related to all things in Northwest Indiana but turned to nationally and then internationally. This is what you call a progressive team player that is thinking not only how to help and assist others in being successful. His concern was about how people are completely screwing up their social media which goes well beyond social media. This is social media, digital marketing, and websites altogether. With what he talked about I know he will be writing several articles on it, but I started thinking of several items that can help your brand achieve success when doing social media.

For those that don’t hustle seven days a week, I truly commend you. I wish my life was like that but my mind is not wired no matter how much I try. For the longest time I tried but all it did was put me into a depression working the Monday to Friday life. I hated Monday’s and was living for Friday’s. This didn’t make for a positive work/life balance nor did it make me happy. I thought it did but looking back I was truly miserable.

eCommerce is slowing becoming a major component of what we offer and businesses are starting to realize there are ways to monetize the internet. As an example, we used to do an eCommerce site every four to six months. Today we are averaging two to three full-featured eCommerce sites every month. Businesses want to invest money and grow their business while spending as little as possible. eCommerce is a great way of doing that with the integration in social media, search engines, and working for you 24x7. Today we are going to talk about some of the core items you need to look into before you setup your successful eCommerce solution and drive online sales for your business.

One of the biggest aspects of our company lately is converting Adobe Muse sites to a full-fledged content management system (CMS). But why would we be switching new clients from Adobe Muse to another system even when they had their website built in the last six months? The reasoning is shocking in some aspects yet not so much in other aspects. Let's look at the top 10 reasons you should be dumping Adobe Muse if your business is running it today.

We are always excited about updates to our eCommerce platforms. Yes, you can call us nerds with this making us excited but eCommerce solutions are great for businesses. Most businesses see websites as cost centers even if they generated leads, inform their customers, or educate and show them as experts. eCommerce solutions are unique in that they bring in and show physical money which makes business owners eyes glisten. Today we’re going to look at the latest update for nopCommerce which is our preferred eCommerce system as it gives you complete control, is open source, and best of all highly customizable and built for eCommerce from the ground up.

We feel it is great that companies in Northwest Indiana and really all over the United States are looking to streamline and save money. The question comes to where do you automate and have truly in-personal communication and where do you have that personal touch we all enjoy? Technology has a place to help cut costs. No longer do you need to pay $500-$1,000+ for social media digital marketing management. Technology can help keep costs low and increase your brands reach. Let the computer do the heavy lifting that used to take hours to gather information so that you can focus on what matters; the customer. Let’s look at where technology can (and should) be used, where it can (and shouldn’t be), and where you need to still use that 100% personal touch.

If you are running a business, sometimes you simply can't run all aspects by yourself and need assistance in creating ads and running campaigns. Facebook understands this and has given all business pages the ability to add other people to your page, whether they are your employees or members from other marketing agencies.

Organizations know they need someone in a role that communicates with clients, they know it will improve customer satisfaction, but never want to invest (e.g. it eats into their profits) in such a role. Often an organization will allocate a small part of a person’s (or multiple employees) time to it. This causes a system that actually can be even more inefficient. This is why as an organization we added Lorissa to our team with just one job duty of communicating with our clients. This dedicated position will make certain customer communication happens. We even have set parameters that we will add another person in this position when we reach certain thresholds so that we don’t run into a situation where our coordinator is overworked and create failure in communication. Our project coordinator position, which we call the Time Keeper, has the sole responsibility to communicate with the customer, put in tasks for the team, double-check the tasks that the team did, and get back with the client that the changes are done. This role has no other functions and how it will stay.