Small Business Center

4 Tips for Managing an Outside Consultant

October 31st, 2008 by Admin

4 Tips for Managing an Outside Consultant
By: Cathy Siciliano, Senior Director of Marketing at Elance

More and more small businesses are hiring outside consultants to help them get their work done. In fact, new project postings on Elance, an online workplace where you can find and hire outside consultants, have increased 68% since this time last year.

But how do you hire an outside consultant, and what is the best way to manage the project to make sure you get on-time, high quality work? Read on for tips from Cathy Siciliano, senior director of marketing at Elance. Cathy regularly works with outside consultants and has successfully managed dozens of remote projects:

1. Be specific
...

OrangeSoda Recognized in Utah Business Magazine

October 28th, 2008 by Admin

Utah Business Magazine recognized OrangeSoda in the October 2008 issue. We were noted as part of the top 20 of Utah’s High Tech companies. The tech companies were all started by entrepreneurs - and you’ll see we’re in good company! I’m a big fan of Klymit and Sendside Networks and some of the other companies highlighted.

The issue also includes an article about search engine optimization. It lists Utah companies who provide SEO services for businesses, including OrangeSoda.

Note: You must register on the site to view the article at http://www.utahbusiness.com/parser.php?nav=article&article_id=7406. Ask me how I feel about their web site (not to mention the URLs)! You need us for some...

Local Online Advertisers Miss Sales Opportunities

October 7th, 2008 by Admin

A new study by Marchex, Inc. shows that many advertisers are not doing locally targeted advertisements. While many (over 70 percent or the 150 advertisers surveyed) are advertising online, about half are doing local online advertising.

The advertisers want to do more local online advertising, aren’t quite sure how to approach it. Few local advertisers are running ads targeted to city, or zip code. They also cite limited success metrics to measure how their campaigns are performing.

Here are some more findings:

• Almost half said that at least 25% of their in-store sales were driven by online marketing.
• More than half use different messaging or tactics to target different geographic or...