What if, when people search for your company, the first thing they see is a bad review from a dissatisfied customer?

In this new online world, prospective customers are increasingly turning to customer reviews when deciding whether or not to buy from a company. A set of good reviews can work wonders and, likewise, a few bad reviews can send people off to your competitors. As a business owner, then, it’s important that you know what people are saying about you online. A small amount of work will help you identify what your customers perceive as the strengths and weaknesses of the service you provide and let you improve your ratings until your business stands out as one of the best.

How can you possibly keep track of what’s being said online about your business? The web’s a big place, after all! One handy tool that can help is Google Alerts. Simply set it up with your company’s name and it’ll send you email alerts whenever someone writes about your company.

photo credit: RLHyde

Are you trying to get your company written about in the top blogs for your industry?

Online PR Best Practice

The bad news is that sending out press releases to the right bloggers isn’t enough. The good news is that it can be done if you know how.

What it comes down to is this: if they don’t know you, chances are good that a given blogger will ignore your press releases.

The answer?

You need to build a relationship with them over time.

Get to Know a Blogger

How do you build a relationship with a blogger?

• Leave comments on their blog posts.
• Jot them a quick email to praise an article they’ve written and suggest a couple of other things they might be interested in.
• Don’t pitch your company or story.
• Do mention your company’s name in your email signature.
• Try to attend industry events where you can meet them in person.
• Meet them.
• Buy them a coffee.
• Get to know them.
• Let them get to know you.

Build on Your Relationship

When you’ve got to know a blogger, they will be much more receptive to your news and you’ll have a better understanding of what they’re looking for in a story. All in all, you’ll have a much better chance of getting written-up and receiving favourable mentions in their blog

It going to take time and effort, but it’ll be worth it in the end.

Good luck!
photo credit: richardmasoner

According to one expert, it could hurt your brand.

Loren Feldman of 1938media and idiot puppet fame gave a presentation at a recent conference on his tips for doing Web video.

If you don’t have time to watch it all, skip down to my summary of his main points below.

Online video chat by Ustream

Why Video?

1. It can set you apart from your competition.
2. It’s a powerful communication medium (“nothing tells a story like video”)
3. Tends to rank well in Google.
4. It’s not for everyone. If you haven’t got the right personality, maybe you should skip it. Bad video could hurt your brand. That said, you can get better with practice.

Style

1. Web video is intimate. Talk as though you’re talking to a friend.
2. Look straight into the lens (imagine the camera is the person you’re speaking to.
3. Talk about things that interest you. Your passion (or lack of it) will show through.
4. Find your own style. Be yourself.
5. Keep it short. 2-4 minutes is good.

Technical Considerations

1. Shooting: You don’t need expensive equipment (Loren shoots 99% with his Mac’s built-in camera, the rest with a $120 Casio camera). Audio is very important, but the built-in microphones of the Mac and Casio are fine.
2. Editing: look to cut on audio (not necessarily video). Loren recommends iMovie for basic editing and FinalCut for more advanced editing (both on Mac).
3. Distribution: YouTube has the vast majority of the audience. Use relevant tags and titles. If possible, make sure the image that gets used to represent your video is a good one.

Have you experimented with using Web video to promote your small business? Let us know how you’ve got on.

Chances are, with the economy how it is, there are fewer people advertising right now than a year ago. So make the most of that.

With spare inventory on their hands, sellers of advertising should be able to offer some good deals. Ask for extra space for the same money. Or ask for better placement.

photo credit: John-Morgan

What’s the best way to do B2B marketing? The answer is “it depends”.

Your best bet is to try lots of different approaches and measure your results. Invest more in the techniques that work best and drop the ones that work poorly.

Here are some different tactics you might like to try:

1. Telesales
2. Delivering flyers to local businesses
3. Letters to businesses
4. Door-to-door visits in person
5. Participate in online business forums
6. Send ‘thank you’ gifts to existing customers
7. Networking events

Whatever approaches you use to make initial contacts, don’t forget to follow up with phone calls, emails, etc. as appropriate.

photo credit: lawtonchiles

If you know what you’re doing, speed networking events can be a highly effective way to make business contacts. If you don’t know what you’re doing, they can be a tiring waste of time.

Here are some tips on deciding which events to attend and how to get the most out of them.

1. Spread yourself around. Don’t attend the same event too often or you’ll end up meeting the same people, or colleagues from the same companies. Wait a while before going along again.
2. Have fun! Relax and be yourself. Don’t take it too seriously and you’ll enjoy the event more and come across better.
3. Wear something distinctive, like a hat or a flower. It’ll help people remember you when you contact them later.
4. Take a pen and make notes about the people you meet. You won’t be able to remember them all later.
5. Take plenty of business cards and hand them out generously. Consider using the back of your cards to list the services you provide.
6. Listen carefully to what people tell you. When it’s your turn to speak, they’ll return the favour.
7. Try to arrive a few minutes early to find out how the evening will work and make a few initial contacts.
8. Have a good idea what you want to tell people.
9. If you meet someone who may be a good contact, try to talk with them after the event.
10. Work out who would be beneficial to know, take their card, and set up a meeting at a later date.
11. Follow up with interesting contacts by email or phone call soon after the event.
12. Consider taking a portfolio of your work to show people.
13. Take it as a chance to meet new people and start building relationships; don’t expect or try to sell anything.

photo credit: b_d_solis

An Opportunity There for the Taking

We’re at a turning point. More and more people are going online to search for good local businesses (in a YouGov survey commissioned by WeLoveLocal earlier this year, 51% of people said that they used the Internet most to find local businesses), yet very few small businesses have anything more than a simple, static web page to promote themselves.

This leaves the door wide open for savvy business owners like us to get ahead (assuming we’re prepared to do just a little bit better).

Get Ahead and Stay Ahead

The idea is simple: if you run a small local business, the chances are that most of your small competitors don’t have much of an online presence. If you can establish a stronger online presence than your competitors, then it’ll be your business that local people tend to find when they search online.

The more people who find you, the more likely your business is to be mentioned elsewhere on the web, thus building your presence further. With a greater online presence, more people will find you in the future. You’ll thus get more mentions. And so on. With a bit of work, this virtuous circle can, over time, establish your business as the reference for your particular type of business in the local area.

Why a Static Website is Not Enough

Fair enough, you’re thinking. That sounds reasonable, but how do I actually build my business’s online presence? That’s where a blog comes in. Standard websites can be expensive and time-consuming to update, so most small businesses can’t afford to update them very often. That leaves them with static websites that are, frankly, a bit dull and lifeless. People aren’t usually keen to link to dull, lifeless websites.

Why Blogs are Better

A blog is different. Think of a blog like a website that is really easy to add content to. All you need to do is write the content and click a button to publish it. Simple. (You still have to spend time to write new content on a regular basis, mind you, but there are ways you can learn to come up with lots of good ideas for easy-to-write posts. More of that in later articles.)

Advantages of blogs:

1. They’re free!*
2. Easy to set up yourself
3. Quick and easy to update yourself
4. Plenty of free templates available to make them look good
5. People like to link to them
6. You can write informally
7. They’re a way for customers to get to know you

* Later you may want to pay for more advanced features such as hosting under your own domain name.

Blogging Your Way to More Business

Once you’ve got your blog up and running and have a few posts under your belt, you’ll need to market it. Fortunately, given that very few local businesses are probably writing blogs, this won’t be too hard (again, more on this in later articles).

Before long, you’ll have a few links to your blog. Seeing these links, Google will start considering your blog as a good reference and will start showing your site more prominently in the search results. A more prominent listing means more potential customers finding you. You’re on your way!

Further Resources

A couple of free blogging services are Blogger (very easy to use) and WordPress (perhaps slightly more complicated, but with lots of features).

photo credit: ~ A????