For the brick and mortar small business, it’s all about local.
Forget about SEO, blogging, gaining back links, and posting to Facebook and Twitter for just a moment. If you want to draw visitors to your physical storefront, you need to focus on ‘local’ first. Get the local part right, and the rest will begin to make sense. All paths will lead directly to your door. [Read more…] about It’s All About Local
Strategy is integral, but you need strong branding for any strategy to be effective.
From where we sit, we see companies growing and evolving to accommodate their new ideas and bigger visions. It’s exciting to watch businesses grow in defiance of what the news media hands out on silver platters. It makes dramatic story lines, and we should listen with compassion, but those stories don’t have to shape your reality.
I want to caution you, however, that growth and vision may require basic, often costly changes, that shouldn’t be ignored while you’re building. Even if your new idea is simply a better conception of a previous business, how you brand it will absolutely impact your ability to attract the customers you desire – and the ability to make the money you’re envisioning. [Read more…] about How Does Branding Impact Your Ability to Attract?
We’ve just returned from a trip to Dallas, TX to participate in Sandi Krakowski’s ‘Divine Call of God on Your Business’ event. It was a wonderful business and personal growth experience, with great speakers and inspiring messages. The two biggest take-aways for me were in the area of relationship building and my readiness to act on things I already know to be true. (More on these in a future post.)
On the way to Texas, we spent the night at a cute, retro motel that we never would have even heard of had it not been for social media and Google Places reviews. [Read more…] about Local Business Reviews Are Powerful
It’s not easy to manage a blog when you run a company. Unless you started out blogging, most businesses that we come in contact with would rather pay to have it done for them than struggle with their own blog. It’s not hard, though, and the heaviest factor seems to be whether or not you’ll develop the discipline to do it. That said, disciplines take some effort and forethought. Blogging is no different. [Read more…] about Are You Blogging Enough?
Wonder how social media works for your company? If you don’t set up a decent profile, it won’t work for you at all.
The first thing to setting up your profiles is to make sure what you add really benefits your brand. We can talk all day about how to manage the Twitterverse, but when it comes down to it, people join these communities to stay involved with people. They go to profiles first for many reasons.
1. To make sure you’re a real person, to make sure you’re not some ‘bot’ that wastes their time,
2. To make sure you have something they want to hear more about.
Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are three areas where most businesses should have a profile. Each of these areas allows you a small amount of space to share who you are, what you offer, who you work for, and how to get in touch with you to learn more. I suggest you take that one step farther – make sure anyone who is deciding whether or not to follow you knows how you could help them with your products or services. [Read more…] about How To Set Up a Social Media Profile That Helps Your Brand
My husband, gotta love him, hasn’t mastered Twitter yet. Like many of you, when he realized it could benefit his speaking engagement, there were too many other things that took precedence. The show had to go on.
Twitter isn’t hard, but it is different on different smartphones and the apps also work a little differently. It looks easy enough, but I suggest reading this letter I sent him first. (Had I known he didn’t ‘get it’ I would have started helping him a long time ago!) I have his permission to post the letter I sent him later that day, so here it is! ~Susan
[Read more…] about How to Use Twitter For Conferences
