If you regularly attend business networking events then you probably have a large stack of business cards that you carry with you. Many people just carry them in their pocket which results in them handing out bent and distorted cards – hardly a good impression to set!

For this reason any networker should invest in a smart business card holder or case to house their cards and keep them in good condition. In this article we look at the different types of business card holders that are available and help you choose the right one for you.

Leather card holders

These are probably at the premium end of card holders due to them being created from, or at least layered with, genuine leather. This gives a luxurious feel and due to the natural durability of leather they last a long time.

These make fantastic gifts for friends and colleagues but also help to create a good first impression when you meet somebody at an event for the first time.

Metal card cases

These are often smaller and able to carry fewer cards than other holders but they are still quite stunning nonetheless. Available in a variety of metals from chrome to aluminium, these card cases are very strong and look great.

Rotary card holders

You will recognise these from the desks of cops and office workers in movies from the eighties! These rotary business card holders enable you to quickly flick through your contact list with the aid of index tabs. They often hold hundreds of cards so make a great addition to any office desk.

With the advances in technology however, many people are opting to keep their contacts completely digital and as these rotary systems are not designed to leave the office, their popularity is diminishing.

Savvy business people still have one for cases of technical emergencies anyway, allowing them to find the details of that PC repair guy they met a few months back with ease!

Card wallets

These are usually much larger and are designed to store many business cards for the purpose of presentation. A little bit like a photo album, card wallets provide a great place to put all of the cards you have collected over the months and years in one single place for reference.

These have additional benefits other than simply finding contacts; if you are a fan of innovative design like myself you can use these as a place to store your favourite business card designs and use them for inspiration next time you design a new card.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matt_Saunders

Google Places, formerly Google Local, is easily the most powerful free marketing tool available to local businesses. Introduced in March 2004, Google Local displays local business information at the top of many of Google’s organic search results accompanied by a map. As of June 2010, Google Places listings consist of 1, 3 or 7 businesses for most searches. Considering that most localized searches provide millions of organic search results, showing in the top 7 of Google Places can be invaluable to a business.

Breaking into the top 7 takes knowledge and time and staying there takes effort. It all starts with claiming and optimizing your Google Places local business listing.

Visit Google and search for Google Places. Register for an account. Follow the bouncing ball until you can click on the button that says “Add a Business”.

As a quick aside, it is assumed that anyone who would read this knows that Google Places only allows one listing per phone number. While you can in fact create multiple listings with the same number and reap the benefit for a short time, eventually you’ll find that all of your listings have disappeared into the void. Don’t play games with Google Places. It isn’t worth the time and effort it takes to undo the damage should you cross the dozens of arbitrary, invisible boundaries that Google has in place to try to make the entire process “fair” for every business.

The first page of the submission form is mostly fill in the blank, but there are 3 important opportunities to optimize the listing.

Company/Organization: Choose your business name wisely. No one audits the listings to verify that the company name matches your incorporation documents, but be careful. If you company’s legal name is “Paul’s Professional Services, Inc.”, you need to carefully tweak it for the purposes of Google Places optimization. Two common methods are to add a keyword descriptor or your primary city. For example: “Paul’s Professional Painting Services” or “Paul’s Painting Services of Dallas”. Monkey with your company name too much using obviously manipulative methods for cramming keywords into the field and you’ll eventually find that your Google Places listing has been relegated to a black hole by Google. Typically, this is the direct result of your competition reporting your listing to Google. Simply conduct a Google search for “locksmith Google spammers” and you’ll find some insight on why you do not want to get on the bad side of Google Places.

Description: Carefully craft a 200 character description of your business focusing almost exclusively on your key products and services. Do not waste space here for marketing speak such as “Proudly serving the DFW area since 1974″. Do not waste space here by including geographic references. The geography is almost entirely controlled by the city you list for your address. Inclusion of additional cities does virtually nothing when it comes to optimizing your Google Places listing.

For our hypothetical painting company, Paul’s Professional Services, an optimized description would go something like:

Residential and commercial painter specializing in interior and exterior painting. Services include wall painting, ceiling painting, textures, faux finishes and color matching. Free estimates.

Note that the example include not only the company’s top services, but also includes multiple uses of the primary keyword in various forms – “painting” and “painter” are the top two keywords in searches according to Google’s Keyword Tool. In addition, “free” is a top search word for virtually any search phrase.

It is important to remember that the description is designed to reach a broader search audience – not win awards on Madison Avenue. Keep it simple and include your top keywords. 200 characters is not a lot of room, so make sure not to waste space.

Category: Google Places requires the use of at least one standard category. Begin by typing your top keywords and choose the most relevant category. Google Places provides the ability to include 5 categories. Use them. If your top keywords are not standard categories, then use one or two closely related standard categories and use the remaining three slots for specific keywords.

For our hypothetical company, the categories might look something like:

Painter (Standard)

Painting Contractor (Top keyword search / Custom Category)

House Painter (Top keyword search / Custom Category)

Commercial Painter (Top keyword search / Custom Category)

Handyman (Standard, but an extremely popular related search term)

NEXT. Page Two of submission form.

The Service Areas and Location Settings options are relatively new and are designed to allow a business to establish a service area if the company does not have a storefront of some sort. Initially, choosing a service area (“Yes, this business serves customers at their locations”) appeared to hinder the optimization process. While the jury is still out, Google continues to tweak this feature. If in doubt, complete the option accurately for your business.

Business hours and payment options are purely optional and serve little if any value to the optimization process. Potential customers certainly will find the information useful.

Google Places provides the ability to add up to 10 photos and 5 videos (from YouTube.com). Make sure you always use keywords to name your photos and take advantage of the “tag” functions provided by YouTube.com. The impact on Google Places traffic is limited, but any impact is good.

Additional details: Google’s examples are virtually useless and very misleading. To optimize your listing, create a table of your key products and services using as many keywords as possible. Each detail consists of two fields with a maximum space of 200 characters each. An example of an effective use of these fields for our hypothetical company would be:

Interior & Exterior Painting Contractor specializing in: Wall painting, Ceiling painting, Floor staining, Epoxy Floor coatings, Texture paint finishes, faux finishes, color matching, proper surface preparation

The colon is the separator between the two fields. Include as many additional details about your company, your products and your services as possible.

Feel free to include service areas as one of the Additional Details for informational purposes, but do not expect it to cause your Google Places listing to show in those cities.

SUBMIT.

The new Google Places local business listing will not be active until verified. Usually, verification can be completed by triggering a phone call from Google’s computers to the phone number of record for the listing. In some instances, Google requires verification via a postcard mailed to the address of record for the listing. Postcards can take up to 5 weeks to arrive. Once verified, the real work begins.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_J_Dumas

Consistency of change brings to the fore what is essential in a business enterprise for its healthy existence. A new business model brings forth the question of what is essential to that particular model. But, how does one know the essentials of a new business model? The answer is found by reverting back to the bottom line rule.

And the rule is that a business enterprise must engage in profitable exercises to sustain itself. Now a days when new approaches are thought of in the myriads of technology trade and industry trends, competitions, markets, economies and political scenarios, some things some times go a miss. For example the profits. This is evident mostly in those areas where the entry level is minimal and sky is the limit so to speak.

A few things to keep in mind firmly while coming up with new business model plans, are quite basic yet they need to be stressed as they are in a different shape for an innovative business. Those important few things also could be quite different for each case. The important thing is to identify them well in advance, recognize them for what they are and build the innovative plans as creatively as one desires as long as those “few things in the mind” are still holding true.

Now what are these “few things in the mind”? these few things in the mind are simply the things which connect back to the bottom line rule. For example, a new catering service has come up with a great innovative business plan for themselves where a diner gets to choose the menu and dine for free but at a place where the caterer wants anywhere in the vicinity of customers choice. Great, the customer gets to dine free, whoa! Now who will deny such an opportunity?

Now what are the essential things? Where should the caterer start? How does the new business model caterer identify the essentials of his enterprise? what “few things in the mind” are to be kept firmly in his mind?

For simplicity sake we keep the list of essentials and “few things in the mind”, short, so as to understand the point at hand. Among the general essentials are great service, memorable experience, and fantastic food. But for this particular business model another set of essentials are necessary. Like having a clout to be presenting their dinner at interesting places night after night and that too free to the customer. Like having great customers among venue owners who love it that the caterer brings people who look happy and satisfied and then spend more than the dinner on other items at the venue. Or return to the venue later as customers. It is essential for this innovative business model to have pro location scouts. But wait, how does the caterer identify these. He does by the old adage, follow the cash.

What are the “few things in the mind” for the caterer to keep firm? The caterer has to be paid happily by the venue owners and the free diners have to be the right target clients for this to work. So in short he has to keep in mind firmly that he is a catalyst for both his free diners and the paying venue owners. surely he is not a caterer but a catalyst caterer.

How does this connect back to the bottom line worries? it connects in two places diner and venue owner. As long as he is able to bring the right target audience to the venue and as long as he can open new or interesting vistas for diners with his magic potion of food experience and service to convert them to paying diners as well, the caterer might have a shot at his new business model in the competitive innovative business environment.

If there is a new innovative business model to be considered, its new bottom line worries need to be recognized and supported by its essentials for the venture to succeed.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Naeem_Sogay

You’ve got your idea in place, you have done all the paperwork and your new business is launched. So what do you do to get it promoted to the world? This article will present three quick marketing techniques. These strategies apply whether you are a brick and mortar business at the local mall or a home based business. The power of the internet works as an equal opportunity employer.

Number 1 – Social Networking This is probably the simplest and the most familiar. We all know the power of referrals. Use your Facebook account to introduce your business to your world. Now you don’t want to come out and be a blatant advertisement. Start a conversation with a close friend about your excitement of starting your own business. Allow the conversation to evolve including products or services that you provide.

While in Facebook, accumulate more friends and join groups of like minded individuals. Join as many groups as you have interests which would include business or personal or maybe environmental. Start connecting with people outside your own social circle.

Number 2- ads While you are starting your business, your budget may be squeezed a little bit tight. If this is the case, there are many places to advertise for free. Craigslist is one of them, but you need to be very careful and examine all of their rules. There are other sites such as USFreeAds, InetGiant and more. As your business grows, you can then expand your Ads into paid ads. Take the time to look at Google AdWords. You may not be ready at this point, but it is an area that eventually you will want to incorporate into your advertising strategy and budget.

Number 3 – video marketing We all love to watch the videos on YouTube. Why not use that for your own business? If you are a little bit of a ham, video marketing will come easily. You may think that what you recording is goofy, but go for it. Try doing a search on Google for a product or service. The chances are great that on the first page of the Google search, there will be some sort of video. Videos rank very high in the search engines.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sharon_Burger