VTWebProperties

Small Towns, Small Businesses

I live in a small town in Vermont. There are a few restaurants, a pharmacy, a handful of gas stations, a great bookstore and the usual assortment of small businesses you might expect in a place boasting a population of about 5,000. I like the pace of life here and I like supporting the small, independently owned brick and mortar businesses that my community depends on  – whether for books, a good cup of coffee or for that just-right gift from the corner boutique. I want my neighbors businesses to succeed and I want my community to thrive.

I am currently teaching a course on website marketing at the local tech center and I have a handful of students. One of those students has a well-established Vermont country store and restaurant in a nearby town (even smaller than mine).  She just recently started her website and is looking to connect with and grow her base of customers beyond the locals who know and love her establishment. Her situation has gotten me thinking a lot about what kind of online strategy makes sense for these small, local businesses.

A Three Part Strategy For Small Business

1. A Simple Business Card Website
2. A Presence on Twitter
3. A Facebook Fan Page
   

A Simple Business Card Website

My local boutique shop is not likely to sell their funky jewelry, unique clothing or scented candles online. They sell directly to their customers in an old-fashioned face-to-face and very human capacity. They don’t have a website. This in itself isn’t the end of the world, but if it’s getting to be near 5PM and I realize I need to pick up a gift I have to make a determined effort to find their phone number and call them to see if they are open late enough for me to drop in. As I write this post it is too late for me to actually check their hours by phone. Since they have no website I can’t actually find out the answer to this question until sometime tomorrow. If I were actually in need of knowing this information I might move onto a plan B, giving my business to someone else.

A very simple business card microsite with basic information such as hours of operation and contact information would suffice in situations like these. Coupling these business card sites with a local search placement service makes sense.

A Presence on Twitter

I admit that Twitter isn’t for everybody. It’s an odd platform to get used to, and many folks have a hard time conceiving of how they could use it to further their small business. Twitter is really more about personalities than marketing messages. The million people who follow David Pogue are following him - they are not following the New York Times (although I imagine many follow both). The point here is that as a small business owner who works in a community where you recognize the faces coming through your door and you know the names of many of them (if not all of them), Twitter provides a very simple mechanism to let them get to know you better. Twitter is about allowing your customers a glimpse into who you are as a person – to allow them a chance to broaden the sense of connection beyond a register receipt.

Some of the people I deal with remark that they have no clue what they would Tweet about. I think it just takes some practice. The folks who choose to follow you may hope to find simple messages about your business (announcing sales, etc.), but just remarking on simple things (”wow – this new CD by so-and-so we’re playing in the store is fabulous!”) is enough.

A Facebook Fan Page

The third part of the web strategy for small business involves Facebook. Fan pages on Facebook  have evolved over the last couple years to become a  really valuable way of connecting with your community. Fan pages are simple to set up and provide a place to post stories, links, announcements, videos and everything else you can think of relating to your business.

The real value, however, comes from that word “relating”. Because people can add themselves as Fans of your business, this becomes known to members of their social network, encouraging others to check you out. Facebook Fan pages give your business a unique opportunity to develop a voice, encourage feedback and build two-way relationships with your customers.

Small Businesses, Big Impacts

I like my small town. I like the small businesses that line the downtown and I like that I recognize so many of the faces I see – it has a big impact on my sense of well-being and my sense of belonging to a community. If you happen to run one of these small establishments know that there are many, many folks out there who would welcome having you join the social web. You might just discover that this simple three-step strategy can have a real impact on your business.

No Comments | In: Search Engine Optimization, Small Business, Social Media | tags: Facebook, local search, microsite, Small Business, Social Media, Twitter. | #

If you are looking to gain traction with search engines and wanting also to get people interested in your website topic visiting your site, it is imperative that you get inbound links to your website pages. This seems obvious, yet many website owners are unaware of exactly how important gaining links really is. Moreover, there are an even greater number of website owners who have no understanding of how to do this or why it is important to do it correctly.

Before we can start to think about getting that lovely link juice flowing to your website, you need to stand back for a moment and give your website an honest evaluation about the content you are offering. Is it original? Is it timely and informative? Is it easy to navigate to or does it take ten clicks to reach? Would you send a link to friend to check out the page if it were not your own website? Honest answers to these questions can help you refine existing content or add new content to your site.

There are two basic types of inbound links – natural and not-so-natural. Natural links are the ones that appear when somebody happens across your page and wants to share it with the world because they find the information useful in some way. Not-so-natural links are the ones that are either bought or solicited in some manner. Both are valid, but eventually your goal should be to have so much valuable content that natural links start to spring up around the web. These links will be rewarded by search engines with greater rankings for keywords on your pages.

Why do links matter? Because without them your website will be a very lonely place. Links tell search engines that others value your content. Links are the currency of the online world, the more links you have the more likely you are to have traffic and better serach results. Links bring home the bacon.

So how do you go about getting links? It starts with  understanding your own niche. Let’s say you have a business that sells specialty wine. You might consider creating content that discusses the origins of the grapes or the process used to make the wines. You might consider content that contains recipes for meals designed to compliment the wine or a page describing the different glasses used to drink wine from. You might create fan pages on Facebook or scan and create a collection of wine labels which could be of interest to graphic designers. Content can and should be greater than the name of the wine, the cost and a shopping cart – it should engage readers who are interested in specialty wine as a subject matter in order to gain inbound links to the content.

Once you have created a broad array of content about your subject then it becomes time to look for opportunities to ask for links. Many people maintain directories and resources which aim to be complete collections of sites about a particular subject. Start by looking for these resources and asking for links to your core content. Surely there are numerous directories of sites and blogs about wine.

Then begin to look a little further out – what goe sgood with wine? Cheese! So … start looking for opportunities to get links from resources on cheese making to a review on a wine matched perfectly. Use the page you have created about the art of pouring wine as an opportunity to get links from resources on etiquitte.

As you can see, it becomes possible to start building a community of related subjects linking to your content when you start looking beyond the immediate subject and start thinking about relationships your subject has to others.

Another method for gaining links is to become a contributor to other websites via comments, guest posts or reprint article distribution.  Look for a roundup of some good resources for this in a future post.

Getting links boils down to creating good content,  targeting  sites such as directories,  blogs and social media sites and asking them to link to your site. Be sure that when you ask, you have a resource worthy of linking to.

No Comments | In: Search Engine Optimization, Website Traffic | tags: Link Building, SEO. | #

Many businesses have a sphere of influence that is based heavily on their geography. Consider your local restaurant, movie theatre or bookstore. How do these businesses use their online properties to grow business? The answer lies in local search. They are for the most part unlikely to compete with businesses even 50 miles away, while they stand to gain from having an online presence targeted at informing and attracting local customers and clients.

According to a 2007 Nielson survey 82% of respondents claim to use internet search engines for finding local business information. Allowing for multiple selections, half of respondents use online yellow pages (IYP) for the same purpose, while 65% use the printed phone books for the same purpose.

This means that on average a majority of people seeking information about local businesses first go to the web to find the information they seek. Yet it is the small businesses that least often have an internet presence. However, all is not lost for the small business without a website. Enter: Local Search results.

Taking my own hometown of Randolph, VT as an example, if you Google “cafe Randolph, VT” you will be presented with a handful of results including Google Local results presented as a map with markers:

The first result is a Dunkin Donuts (how that counts as a cafe is beyond me) while the other two represent businesses that do not have a website of their own. Nonetheless there exists an opportunity for these businesses to leverage Local Search and present information about their business to prospective customers.

By having a very simple website that includes hours of operation, directions, contact information and perhaps a paragraph or two about what the business offers, it is possible to capitalize on Local Search with a low barrier to entry. VT Web Properties offers the simple Business Card Websites for exactly this purpose.

For businesses which do have websites already Local Search is a great way to gain more exposure for your business.

So how does a business end up in these results and what about competitive geographies or categories of business? By including your business in as many IYP sites as possible and by working to gain inbound relevant links otherwise it is possible to move your site toward the top of Local Search results.

VT Web Properties maintains a list of forty five Local Search resources which we use to help position your business better. Of these a handful are paid-for-inclusion while the majority are free. To give your business a Local Search jumpstart visit our Local Search Services page and sign up to have us help get you in front of the 82% of folks looking for you online.

No Comments | In: Search Engine Optimization | tags: Internet Yellow Pages, local search, search services. | #