Don't have a big budget like the large corporations in your community, but still want to give this Holiday season?
Here are a couple of suggestions:

1.  Call your local elementary school and ask for coat sizes of children who need coats.
You can purchase a child's coat for just 20.00 at Target this year!  Click here for an example.
Maybe even tell the school you will match up to 5 coat donations, or whatever fits in your budget.  Get the giving rolling!

2.  Donate what you can to small business owners in third world countries.
Micro loan organizations help give people dignity, funds, and in Opportunity International's case, skills to start and sustain a small business.  I was privileged to visit with Opportunity International in Columbia this summer.  While there I met people who are now able to dream of things bigger then their day to day needs, something they had never experienced before!
See what it is all about and read micro loan recipient bio's here - http://www.opportunity.org/give.

*MC Design & Services, LLC does NOT recieve any money for suggesting the organizations or links in this post.

Do you want to connect your business connections to your facebook business page, but don't want to import your whole email contact list which includes personal contacts or organizations you may not want to contact on facebook?  Here is how you can do it from a spreadsheet.

1. Determine which emails you want to use, put in an excel document in one column.

• Name the column Email
  
• Name and save the document as a .csv file
  

2. Login to facebook

• Go to your Friends Icon on the top of the page, click on the Find Friends link
  
• Scroll down and click on Other Tools, Upload Contact File
  
• Click on the browse button and upload the .csv file you just saved
  
• Facebook will process your list and let you know how many on your list are on facebook
  
• You can then check which contacts you want to invite or choose to invite all of them by check the box invite all.
  
• Click on Invite Friends button
  

3. Invite Friends And Family To Facebook will come up with a list of contacts NOT on facebook - you can decide if you want to send a facebook invite to them or not. You will want to determine if these contacts would want that kind of email from you related to business.

4. If you don't want to send invites to the contacts NOT on facebook, click SKIP.

You are done!  Get ready for your facebook business page to be liked and recommended!

Join Our Mailing List! for more tips like this.

Here is a study on the effectiveness of Email Marketing.  MC Design & Services, LLC can support your use of email marketing and help brand your emails to match your website or logo.

Do you know what Google means?

If you don't I'm sure you will "google" that to find out.  Send me the answer in an email before July 10th and I will send the first 10 respondents $100.00 in FREE advertising with Google Adwords!  You can not already have an AdWords account to recieve the voucher.  This is a great way to test whether search engine marketing is right for your small business and worth the cost.  

Already have an AdWords account?  Send this offer to a friend and tell them to say you sent them and I will take $10.00 off your next invoice or service with MC Design & Services, LLC!

*$10.00 OFF good until 12/2011

** As always if you need help with setting up the google adwords account and creating a campaign, we can help and you can afford it! This offer is NOT subject to any paid service.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the employment of techniques to get your website found on search engines (google, bing, yahoo).
So how do you know if you need it?
Have you ever googled your business?
Do you come up on the first page by typing in your name and location?
If you do, congratulations, you have achieved the first and easiest step.  Now how will someone find you if they do not know your name?  Try googling your services or products you offer and the area you serve (the towns that you do business in).
Does your website come up at all or even close to the first page?  If not, you want to consider getting help.

With our SEO service we consider all avenues that people search, not just search engines, but whatever is generating the most searches at the time.  We analyze your website to make sure there is nothing about your website that is hindering the search engines from reading it, or visitors from staying once they get there.
Our team uses many techniques to get your website's message and links out on the world wide web.  We will consult you on what you can do to improve the situation, you can choose to do it yourself or have us do it for you.
The best part is that we are extremely affordable and know how to get results on the budget that you choose.

*Ask how to get some of your money back from advertising vouchers.

I write this as a warning, as I have been plagued by viruses (well that is what they are called but they are really fake anti-virus trojans, otherwise known as scams!) in the last year.  And yes, I use a PC.  Every time I have been infected by looking at images on a search engine.
I have been in a continual battle of protection versus speed as I work at home on a less then new PC, which I have upgraded as much as I can.  Last week I was infected twice.  The only thing that brought my computer back to life was VIPRE RESCUE's deep scan.  Sunbelt Software offers a free deep scan of your computer as many times as you need it, and it will clean your computer of them more completely then any other application I have tried.  You can access it here.

Now that this has happened so many times, and Microsoft's own Security Essentials seems to fail miserably to catch them, I decided it was time to purchase Sunbelt's anti-virus tool-VIPRE AntiVirus.  They allow you to use it with full functionality for 30 days for FREE.  So far in my trial, it has caught and cleaned a few for me.  In my opinion, this one seems to be the best of all I have tried.

So how do you know if you have been infected by one of these highly-illegal, fake anti-viruses, or any virus for that matter.  If you are surfing along the world-wide web and your computer suddenly slows down for no reason you can see, you have probably just been infected.  The slow down may happen gradually, and that should be looked into also.
Fake anti-viruses will tell you, you have a severe infection and that the only thing that will clean it is itself, they will even make pop-up windows that look like windows of your security program.  I am willing to bet that the security system you bought is not going to recommend you buy another.  No one is that generous!  If you click on one of those po-up windows, forget it, you will not be able to go anywhere until you purchase what they are offering, or as I have found you can access an anit-virus program that works!

For more information check out ScamBusters.org:
www.scambusters.org/fakeantivirus.html

Take this quiz and watch this video to see what you know!
www.GetSeizureSmart.org

I recently had my first successful yard sale.  I got to thinking what did I do right this time that caused me to be in the black instead of slightly in the red as in previous years.  And then I realized it was the same principles that draw visitors/customers to a website.
 
1.  Affordable Advertising where people interested will see it.  I only paid 5.00 for advertising on my local newspaper's website and rest was done by posting on FREE yard sale sites and craig's list.
The same can be done for your website, pay only for advertising that will reach your target audience, where they will be looking (if you are a locally run business - advertise on your local community's websites).  And take advantage of all the free advertising available.
i.e. - facebook, twitter, social networks (more searches are done on social networds then google and bing) and websites that make sense for your business that offer free listing.  Don't post everywhere and anywhere - this is a red flag to search engines and could cost you ranking.

2.  Catch the eye of traffic.  For my yard sale, which was on a day when many others in my area were having sales, I posted signs on all the corners leading to my house.  In big bold, letters my signs read 25 cents & baby, because I wanted people coming to my sale who would say to themselves "it's only 25 cents so I'll buy a lot" and I also had big baby items to sell.  While I got a couple jokesters who were looking for the baby I was selling for 25 cents, almost everyone who came to my sale were people looking for what I had to offer.  When posting on the Internet about your business, you want to use the key words that describe what you have to offer, but you also want to do it in a way that will drive your potential customers to YOU, not someone else.

3.  Stand out above the rest.  In the past I have done yard sales with my sisters who have just as many children as I do, and therefore just as many things to sell.  I hate to admit this, but for some reason when my things were placed on the same display as theirs, their things were always chosen to be bought over mine.  This year I decided to do the sale myself.  How does your business become the only one among the choices?  Make it the only choice.  Make your website, services and contacting you accessible by doing frequent branded emails with useful information or offers and links to your website and email.  Keep posting on social networks, but make it fun and interesting.  Consider hosting a webinar where you give an informative presentation in your field.  

As always, we can help and you can afford it!  See our new services page for help with everything mentioned above.

Sign up for Email Marketing off our site and we will design an email template for FREE to match your business!

Something I remember about being a kid, and being the 4th born out of 5, is that I didn't like being over-looked.  Or at least feeling like I was being over-looked.  One thing that made me feel that way was when I wasn't told where we were going or what we were doing.  Having 5 kids like my mother and I do can make it hard to remember that the kids are getting older and want to know what to expect for their day.  I have learned in my own home that structure, as long as it is flexible, is good for the toddlers and the school-aged gems of mine.  

Carving out time to work this summer has gone so much more smoothly when the kids know when to expect "fun time".  We go to my parent's pool once a week.  Then we plan one other day where we will go do something away from the house.  Whether it is a park, zoo, museum or beach.  You don't have to stay long, I found a good 2 hours of unadulterated fun wears them out good.  You may even get a nap out of the older ones and find some work time for you.

Each Monday morning I announce to the kiddos how the week is going to go, what day will be our "fun day" and what we will do.  Then when the "i'm bored" comes out I can point to the calender and remind them of what is coming.

On the days when there is no "fun" planned, it is still important to spell out what is going on.  Let them know when you will be working and what will be going on when you are done. (sprinkler, playing outside)