Startup Production

Social Media Marketing with Intention

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Social media offers a great way to show off your expertise, your brand’s unique personality, a glimpse of who you are, your staff’s story and your personal entrepreneurial journey. There are various tricks to getting more engagement, more likes and more followers to help promote your brand and increase your reach. There is no shortage to ‘social media gurus’ out…

Why your Website needs more Security

In this day and age, with data breaches, malware attacks such as ransomware, and virus outbreaks, our digital data is a precious commodity that needs layers of protection. In the last year, I’ve seen more of my clients’ websites getting hacked than I have in all the 15+ years previous.  In fact recent stats verify this increase:  “Over 50,000 websites are hacked every day.“(HostingFacts.com).…

How to Protect your Users’ Privacy (GDPR)

What is the General Data Protection Regulation?

On May 25, 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation went into effect. The GDPR is a European Union initiative designed to give consumers greater control and transparency when it comes to the personal data companies are collecting and storing. The law protects individuals in the 28 member countries of the European Union, even if the data is…

Why your Website is Still the Foundation of your Branding

Why Brand Websites are still Relevant

While I do think social media is still a primary way to capture a select demographic of your target audience, it’s still important to have an engaging and dynamic website as the foundation of your brand’s story. I think of social media as the eye-catching, visually appealing movie trailer that sparks the interest of your audience … that will hopefully lead…

How to Write Engaging Content for your Website

Content is … STILL King

I’ve been preaching the value of good content for years now, and although the technology, search engines and social media platforms are changing faster than we can often keep up with … one thing hasn’t changed:  Content is still King.  Here are some recent statistics to verify that: (more…)

Common Marketing Mistakes that Many Businesses Fall Victim to

In recent networking events, I’ve encountered some rather aggressive and underhanded marketing strategies. When marketing your brand, many business owners or marketing managers may be desperate to make the deal, to overshadow their competitors and to drive new leads to conversion. Unfortunately, in their attempt for the quick hit, they are forgetting how the long-term results of their business…

Promoting your Brand Amidst a Changing Social Media World

The past year, with social media making the news in the political realm, as well as fake new stories, social bullying, live criminal activity, and other viral negative posts, it was time to make a change in the social media world. Many social media users have complained about the over-commercialization and politicizing of their newsfeeds, so the platforms have responded with big changes in…

I’ve had a few clients recently undergo attacks to their identity which included their website, their merchant account, and their emails. With various recent data breaches (Equifax, Yahoo, Target, Uber & more), there is a very good possibility much of our information is already floating out there somewhere in the ‘dark web’, but not all is lost.  There are some practical ways to protect ourselves…

2017 a Year in Review

For the last four years, it’s been a tradition of Startup Production to look back at the end of the year to see what was accomplished, take stock of what’s working, what’s profitable and which services provide the greatest return for our brand and our clients. As the Holiday season is usually slow for B2B Companies, the last few weeks of the year is a great time to slow…

First what is HTTPS?  HTTPS, or “secure http”, was developed to allow authorization and secured transactions. Exchanging confidential information needs to be secured in order to prevent unauthorized access, and https makes this happen. The ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. When an SSL certificate is used,…

What Makes Startup Production Different?

Each day my clients are bombarded with emails from companies saying their website needs to be redone, that they can help them climb the SERPs (search engine results page), or there are a host of errors on their website that only they can solve.   (more…)

Social Media & Content Marketing Tips for Realtors

I was recently invited to speak to a group of local realtors about how they can use Social Media to promote their business.  The basics of social media remain the same regardless of the industry but since the real estate market has a unique audience, there are some specific tips to promote their brand, increase listings and hopefully sell more homes. (more…)

Why Business Women need Community

Why Do Women Need Community

“Women-owned firms (51% or more) account for 31% of all privately held firms and contribute 14% of employment and 12% of revenues.” – NAWBO   “Today, on average, a woman earns 79 cents for every dollar a man earns, and women’s median annual earnings are $10,800 less than men’s”- Senate Joint Economic Committee Democratic Staff   “Even though females have higher…

Recently I was invited to do a Internet Marketing presentation for a local business networking group, but only had twenty minutes to present. Is it possible to give an overview of recommended elements of creating a successful web presence in such a short time?  I decided to pick the most essential ingredients, quickly highlight how and where to implement them and show recent statistics to prove…

Is an HTTPS Website Better than an HTTP Website?

Definition

HTTP stands for “Hyper Text Transfer Protocol”, the primary technology protocol on the Web that allows linking and browsing. This is the technology used to communicate between web servers and web users.   HTTPS is “Hyper Text Transfer Protocol” with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), another protocol primarily developed with secure, safe Internet transactions in mind. The acronym SSL stands…

Happy Small Business Week

Small business week took place from April 30 through May 6, 2017, hosted by the Small Business Administration. What is Small Business Week?  “Every year since 1963, the President of the United States has issued a proclamation announcing National Small Business Week, which recognizes the critical contributions of America’s entrepreneurs and small business owners. More than half of Americans…

Benefits of Home-Based Businesses

“52% of all small businesses are home-based.” – Survey of Business Owner, US Census Since 2007, there has been an increasing trend of home-based entrepreneurs, with more than half of them being women (58.2 percent).  Why are more and more small business owners looking to operate their new or existing business at home?  What are the advantages, disadvantages and tax implications? I. Your…