What would you ask if you had a private audience with a successful publisher and business owner? Now is your chance to find out how our CEO Anita Campbell, who is also Founder and CEO of Small Business Trends, grew these two sites.
Imagine how much you can learn by reading Anita’s advice! Successful people often have so many responsibilities that getting time with them one-on-one presents a challenge. So don’t miss this opportunity.
Who is Anita Campbell?
Anita Campbell is the Founder and CEO of Small Business Trends, the largest small business website online with over 3 million monthly visitors. It is an award-winning site, named twice to the Forbes Best of the Web list (first in 2005 and then again in 2008), and receiving recognition from the Wall Street Journal and MSNBC, among others.
She also owns this site, BizSugar. BizSugar started out as a sharing and voting site, and you can still share and find great content here today. In January 2019, the new BizSugar built on Zohosites was launched. It included the new Mastermind forum running on Zoho Connect.
Anita is a sought-after speaker at small business conferences and Web events. She was an expert tapped to contribute to the Intuit Future of Small Business Report, and to contribute to a series of 7 Guides on social media by American Express OPEN.
Anita holds a B.A. from Duquesne University and a J.D. from the University of Akron Law School. She completed an Executive Education program at the University of Michigan Business School, and the Leadership at the Peak program at the Center for Creative Leadership.
Her specialties include: small business research; selling to small businesses; small business marketing; social media, blogs and podcasts; SMB market; SME market; entrepreneurship; online businesses.
Find out more in Anita’s LinkedIn profile here.
How to Participate in our AMAs
By volunteering for a specific number of hours, our members can get quality answers during our AMAs from people with specialized knowledge. Celebrate our first AMA with us next Wednesday.
You are invited to start leaving your questions now to ensure enough time for Anita to get them all answered. Be sure to ask your questions early so she has time to answer them.
These questions have already been asked:
- Robert Brady of Righteous Marketing asks, “What has been your most successful monetization effort? (i.e. sponsored posts, premium banner placements, etc.)?”
- David Leonhardt of THGMwriters commented: “There have been some huge changes here. What is the grand master plan for BizSugar?”
- Julie Weishaar of NewHorizons123 asks: “I am managing email marketing and creating landing pages in HubSpot’s CRM. What CRMs have you used; which do you prefer and why?”
- Julie Weishaar also asks: “I have been testing Google AdWords and Facebook advertising for an SaaS B2B. Do you have any advice regarding which paid advertising works best for B2Bs?
- Ivana Taylor of DIY Marketers has 3 questions for Anita: First, “How important is it to choose a business model and how do you go about choosing a business model?”
- Second, “How do you start scaling your business? How do you systematize, delegate without breaking the bank?”
- Third: “What is the biggest change you’ve made in your business? What triggered the change and how hard was it to make?”
- Why did you start Small Business Trends?
- Is there an algorithm that decides what content is most popular on Small Business Trends and features it on the home page?
- What is it like to be a publisher of a large site?
- Can someone really make money from online publishing today?
- Which advertising source have you found most profitable?
- Why doesn’t Small Business Trends accept guest contributors much anymore?
- Do you have any regrets related to your businesses?
- How did you grow the original sharing members on BizSugar? Could you talk about remarketing and which remarketer ads you used.
- Why did you commit to Zoho One?
- How do you use Zoho One in your business?
- What are some of the top tech you use to run Small Business Trends and BizSugar?
- Do you have a preferred social sharing solution?
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Samantha Lile asks: “As video continues its dominance and Google is working on technology to decipher its content, what do you foresee as the future of written web content? ” Sue-Ann Bubacz added: ““
- Brian Wallace of NowSourcing said: “Hey Anita! Long time fan and admirer of your site. Since tactics come and go on the internet, what would you say has been the biggest challenge not just to build and maintain the business, but to also stay relevant to the ever changing communities and generations?”
- Nikola Roza asks: SEO seems to be getting more and more complicated. Every algorithm update adds a whole new layer of things we need to do to stay competitive. Optimize for:
- featured snippets
- voice search
- people also ask
- mobile
- AMP
The list goes on and on. How do you keep up?
- Emory Rowland of Leverable asks: “How are you able to consistently deliver great content with multiple authors? Can you tell us anything about your editorial process or how you ensure quality?”
- Liesha Petrovich said: “My question is about social media strategies. I’m not a huge fan of Twitter and I’m looking at Pinterest and Instagram as alternatives. Any advice on choosing the right social media platforms with a very tiny budget?”
- Stefan Koks said: I have 2 questions for now:1) How can I make my readers aware that when they open any article on my novel newspaper, they find themselves in a living story world and follow a part of the story taking place? As this is a complete new concept and the first on the planet, I see myself confronted with that as I can read from the comments that it is not exactly clear to them what is my newspaper about. I have an introduction on the front page, but not everyone goes there before or after reading an article.2) How can I grow my newspaper in a way that people know I exist and what is so special about what I do. I build my social network, I use SEO, but I grow too slow.
- William Patton asks two questions: 1) How does someone keep track of all their ongoing projects or the things you learn about them? What project management or CRM tools do you use?
2. How do you gauge value of social media marketing when it’s not easily trackable? - Martin Lindeskog said, “I have a question regarding future plans for BizSugar. Here is a quote from @Shawn Hessinger‘s post, Introducing the “New” BizSugar:”We hope to also offer opportunities for you in the community to generate revenue and earn money. So stay tuned for that, as the vision unfolds.”Could Anita Campbell tell us about these opportunities you (as team members and advisory board members) have in mind?”
- Ann Smarty said, “I know it may be somewhat cliche, but of you were to start your digital publishing today, how would you go about it? What has changed from when you start Small Business Trends? What would you have done differently?”
- Janette Speyer added, “That is a great question @Ann Smarty, I also would like to expand on this and ask which is the best platform for a publication of this magnitude?”
- Ahmad Raza said, “
- How much traffic does Small Business Trends currently get? and how many people does it take to run your site?
- Do you follow any specific template for your posts? or What is the formula to produce a post that would attract the most shares and visibility in search results? Can you please layout the process if it is not too much to ask?
- If I have a blog that gets about 10,000 visits a day, what key steps should I take to reach 150k visits a day within a span of 10-12 months. How much would that cost?”
Questions are closed now, but you can see the exceptional answers. How?
This was an excellent AMA. I learned a tonne and there’s some cool stuff I want to try and implement on my blog.
Thanks Anita for participating and giving such thorough answers. It must have been exhausting to answer so many questions and in such great detail.
Thanks:)
Hi Nikola,
I’m glad you liked it. I was surprised about what she said about AMP. She shared many tips I will be implementing on my own site as well.
Hi Anita and Gail,
Very interesting questions already raised!
Is this session over?
If so where are the answers given?
Or is it still to be answered I would like to ask one question regarding BizSugar shares.
As David Leonhardt mentioned what are the great plans for this new change? And Martin mentioned how can the participants get benefited by the full participation here as well as at the BizSugar Share section?
I mean what are the monetary benefits its members going to get apart from the traffic?
As Martin quoted above in his question mentioning Shawn Hessinger’s post, it needs a bit more detailed explanation.
Thanks
Philip
Hi Philip,
Yes, the live event is over. The answers are inside the private Mastermind Community in the forum post. Anita did answer the questions you’re asking here.
One of the answers had to do with the long-term goal for small businesses to be able to find and hire talent right in the Mastermind Community. This is not currently in place, but any business in need of talent can ask me and I will connect them with what they need.
Participating in a Mastermind expands your knowledge. You can learn from others which is much faster and less expensive than having to learn everything through your own experience. And we have the weekly events where experts share what they know.
On top of that, we have the resources on the main BizSugar site like the Billable Rate Calculator, the Goals Templates, and other tools. And inside, we have resources including polls, forum posts, and manuals such as the KPI manual we are currently working on completing.
Very interesting resource, how do i participate?
Hi Karen,
Just join our free Mastermind Community at https://mastermind.bizsugar.com. Click on the Forum in the left-hand navigation and you’ll see the AMAs there.
some of the information is really useful and I will apply these tips to my driving schools in Kettering business.
I am also doing small business but have many difficulties in managing goods, recruiting workers to work in the factory. Can you give me some advice? Thank you!
Hello,
If you join our Mastermind Community you can get answers to many questions and read all the resources we have inside.