This is the first official week of spring. I love it! The crisp morning air and glistening dew drops on the budding landscape energize me and cause my winter blues to melt away. I bet a lot of you feel the same.

As the world awakens with spring splendor, it's a good time to take a fresh look at your business – particularly your online presence. Most likely you already know search engine optimization, or SEO, is an important tool to increase traffic to your web site. We agree.

Social network marketing is blossoming into another excellent tool to promote your business online. Chances are, you've tried at least one or more of social media sites such as like LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, or Spoke. But if you are like most business owners, you aren't quite sure how to leverage them to market your business – or simply stated – make more money. Well, let me assure you, you aren't alone.

So many of our SBTV viewers like you, say they want to create a larger presence on the Web so their reach goes beyond their company web site. You've asked for ways to provide information, engage in discussions of issues, develop contacts, and even sharing product demos or testimonials to promote your business without all the clutter of unrelated content on existing social network sites.

We've been listening intently, and this week, your SBTV.com newsletter is devoted to sharing some terrific tools with you. Yes, I'll admit, there's a bit of self-promotion here because I'm going to tell you about the new tools and resources we've created based on feedback from you. Our hope is that these new opportunities will help you achieve your primary goal of SELLING MORE.

Here are four things you can do today to increase sales.

1. Join the community on SBTV.com. By joining you will have immediate access to a range of tools and resources. Join in the discussion groups, create your own blog posts, find other members in your area or similar businesses. All you need to do is Join the Community.
   Then, wait until you see all the other things you can do that you won't find with the "one-size-fits-all" community sites.
2. Want to upload a podcast promoting your business or talk about how your business helps others? Uploading your own audio files is easy and free.
3. Want to create your own product demo video? Perhaps you've been told that uploading video to your own web site is too expensive. Product demos are a great way to show prospects the benefits of your product or service. Shoot a quick video and upload it (it's easy!) on SBTV.com for free. Then, link to it from your company's web site.
4. Learn about ways to increase your sales by using social networking tools. We have collaborated with an expert to create a set of DVDs that show how to increase sales using LinkedIn and other social media tools to increase sales of product and services. These DVDs include step-by-step instructions, complete with visual demonstrations. You can even watch a short demo of these DVDs.

As always, we'll continue bringing you relevant news and information for small business, including our Daily News. It's fresh every day, so be sure to stay up-to-date on small business current events. I hope you try our new tools and resources in the SBTV.com Community. And always feel free to let us know what you think or how we can help you.

 
Have a great week!
Susan Wilson Solovic