The Official BizUnite Blog

Small Business Saturday is November 24th

Sponsored by American Express, Small Business Saturday is held each year on the Saturday that falls between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This year that Saturday is November 24th. While it may seem like you have plenty of time left, it’s important to start preparing your website for the big day.

Each year, American Express seeks to help small businesses by encouraging patronage of small businesses. Customers who register their American Express cards to shop at small businesses on November 24 will be given a $25 credit for each registered cardholder. Customers need only register their cards ahead of time to qualify for the refund.

Today

• ‘Like’ the official Small Business Saturday Facebook page. This will not only sign you up for ongoing updates and reminders about Small Business Saturday, it will also provide information about participating in special contests hosted for small businesses.
• Sign up for ShopSmall to receive ongoing communications about Small Business Saturday, including advice on how your small business can participate.
• Evaluate your small business’s online presence, taking into account local customers who might be searching for you for the first time through sites like Yelp and Angie’s List. Make sure it’s easy for those customers to find  you.

October

• Utilize the many ad tools available in the Small Business Saturday Toolkit. These include signs and tutorials on small business marketing activities like creating a Facebook presence and uploading a YouTube video.
• Work with your web designer to make sure your website is ready for the influx of traffic. Decide which specials you’d like to offer and create banners and signage. The toolkit can help with this.
• Promote the $25 American Express credit and let customers know you are participating in Small Business Saturday. You’ll be amazed how many customers hold American Express cards and will be willing to shop if they know they’re getting a $25 credit.
• Create a way to capture customer information to a database. As you receive a larger-than-usual influx of customers on Small Business Saturday, take advantage of the opportunity to get information on those customers that you can use for future mailings.

November

• Finalize website testing and optimization.
• Hang Small Business Saturday signage prominently in your store’s window and/or near the cash register.
• Promote your Small Business Saturday special offers on your company’s social media sites.
• Don’t forget your current customers. Contact them to let them know about the special offers you’ll have for Small Business Saturday.

When it comes to promotion, it’s never too early to start preparing. Thanksgiving weekend will be here before we know it and with so much competition for attention, small businesses are more challenged than ever to make an impact on Small Business Saturday.

http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2012/09/countdown-to-small-business-saturday-time-to-start-preparing.html/

Attention Payed to Cooperatives at the White House

Many Cooperative leaders made a visit to the White House to discuss the future of cooperatives, the economy, and possible growth in the future. Paul Hazen, Executive Director, OCDC said: “The White House is looking for actions that will spur the economy.  We offered a number of changes to Federal policy that will allow cooperatives to create jobs and increase incomes.” The large group of cooperative leaders that were present created many noteworthy topics about the future of our economy and each cooperatives roll. CCA Global Partners was among many that were represented at the national briefing. To read more visit the link below:

http://www.thenews.coop/article/historical-meeting-us-co-operative-leaders

Discounts on Ink!

New Promotion from Office Max:

We know you need Ink to run your business. Why not spend less on it!

Buy More to Save More: When shopping for ink and toner at OfficeMax, make sure to look for dual or multipacks instead of single packs to save both time and money.

For example, HP LaserJet multipacks cost on average 10% less than their stand-alone counterparts and reduce time associated with ordering and receiving inventory.

 

More For Your Dollar: Look for high-capacity or high-yield cartridges to increase efficiency and decrease costs. For example, HP LaserJet high-capacity cartridges save you up to 35% because they produce more pages than standard cartridges, so you gain the benefits of less printer interaction and reduced cost-per-page printing.

 

Our Ink and Toner Finder is the fast and easy solution for finding the right ink and toner for your machine. Its guided search options allow you to find your ink and toner by manufacturer number, cartridge number or OfficeMax® product code.

 

FACT:

In one year, if the world's discarded cartridges were stacked end-to-end, they would circle the Earth more than three times.
(Source: thedailygreen.com)

Do your Part: Recycle your old cartridges!

2012: The International Year of Co-ops!

The Cooperative Business Journal’s Nancy Jorgensen wrote an interesting article in the Jan/Feb newsletter about the October 31^st celebration of Cooperatives. The article states that 150 co-op and community leaders attended with the same theme in mind, “Building a Cooperative City”. With more than 100 co-op leaders from around the world, the UN General Assembly declared 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives. The theme of unity and delivering a better tomorrow was a common theme of the celebration.

            ICA President Dame Pauline Green stated, “Co-ops are everywhere,” She goes on to explain, “Until you stop and look at their scope and addictiveness, you don’t realize this values based business model is what people have been yearning for and what governments need in order to support and solve many of these international crises that we face today”. Overall, it seams like The Year of Cooperatives comes at a perfect time for all hands to be on deck to make positive business changes. There are a lot of expectations of this International Year of Cooperatives but all in all, the key is improvement of what wheels are already set in motion.

Visit BizUnite's YouTube Channel Today

If you want to get your business two steps ahead of your competition, you should include online video marketing as a tactic in their marketing plans. Doing so will expand the conversion rates and success of any advertising, marketing, or social campaign investment.
 
The reasons for using online video fall back to video being the best way to build business value at every stage of the customer life cycle.  Here are few ways that online video content marketing helps businesses:
 

• Bringing products and brands to life
• Converting browsers into buyers
• Improving customer service efficiency
• Building trust and authenticity
• Increasing traffic and time on site
• Expanding audience and building brands
• Improving internal communications with stakeholders

 
Because the use of corporate online video marketing is relatively new to the field of digital marketing, too few organizations use video content marketing effectively. Most are using traditional advertising and TV newscasts as their main web video productions. While most are posting these web videos on YouTube, some are just posting video content in a static video player that has no social sharing functionality or takes a long time to load.

Check out BizUnite's YouTube Channel Today! http://www.youtube.com/user/bizunitecom

Choose A Co-op

We are excited to share with you an exciting initiative that we have started at BizUnite through our parent company CCA Global Partners. As you may have heard, 2012 will be the international year of the co-op. Our hope is to use the International Year of the Co-op as a springboard to an ongoing movement to educate consumers on the value of co-ops in helping our communities thrive. To start this movement – Choose A Co-op – we have created a powerful video and social media sites to begin spreading the word about cooperatives.

We need your help in spreading the word and really getting the conversation started. After you watch, the Choose A Co-op video at www.Youtube.com/ChooseACoop forward it on to your family, friends, and employees. You can send them the link above or use the “Share” feature on YouTube. You can also use this feature to share the video on Facebook and other social channels. If you are active on Facebook, find Choose A Co-op on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ChooseACoop and “Like” it. You can also add Choose A Co-op as a “like” on your business page if you have one. Choose A Co-op is also on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ChooseACoop.

Please help us in spreading the word about how cooperatives can help build a better world.