Today’s lesson is about Front Matter. Front matter is the front section of the book, everything before the actual chapters of the book start. It’s lesson 3a because I only go through and define the different parts of front matter but I don’t go back into Pressbooks and show you how to create it. Creation will be lesson 3b.
IF your enjoying these videos please let me know. Also let me know if there is any particular aspect of Pressbooks you would like me to cover.
All right ya’ll Google is awesome. If you are a small business owner and you’re still using MicroSoft you need to STOP!
You need to stop paying incredibly high prices
You need to stop re-learning the software every time a new release comes out
You need to stop worrying about security
You need to stop having to relearn operating systems
You need to stop running upgrades every few days
You need to stop fearing the net
You need to Start Using an operating system that is easy to use and intuitive. The new Crome-Tops or Mac OS are much easier to navigate and learn. Installation an upgrades are easy and simply work. Chrome doesn’t even have to be loaded and will never need an update because it does the work for you.
You need To Start Using Google docs. IT’S FREE. AND NOW IT DOES EVERYTHING Office does. Well almost Google Docs still does not have project management software but every other feature of office can be found on Google including Pivot charts. If you don’t use pivot charts you should and Google makes it so much easier than Excel its just crazy how fun they are to work on. This recent change alone made Google a full service provider for me.
Check out the article “Small Business find value in Social Networking.” in Today’s AJC.
This is a great article and shows that small businesses are starting to recognize the value of social media. The truly interesting thing about the article is that it is only partially set up as a social media article. I read it and wanted to leave some comments but the AJC doesn’t encourage it’s community that way. There site is a traditional web site not a blog. There is no community there and so they continue to lose more audience to other platforms that do allow the audiences to interact.
What do you think?
ARE YOU SURE IT REACHES YOUR AUDIENCE?
Traditional advertising has lost a lot of it’d audience. News papers have lost their audiences. Billboards are practically overlooked! Nobody watches local tv anymore. On top of all that all these are expensive mediums in which to advertise and there is a good chance you won’t hit your target market even if you do advertise in the local paper.
So if all these mediums are expensive and they don’t hit your target market as effectively as you would like, what medium brings the best, cheapest, most targeted traffic? Paid Search.
What is Paid Search?
Paid Search is anywhere where you pay a sight such as a search engine to place a little ad and a link that will drive internet traffic to your site.
Who offers paid search?
Google, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, blogs, you name it the site probably provides a form of paid search and there a many forms of paid search.
What are the forms of paid search?
There are a number of forms of online advertising such as cpc (Cost per click) you only pay when someone clicks on your add, CPM(cost per thousand)- cost per thousand impressions, CPL (Cost per lead) – you pay for leads in a more traditional form of lead generation and you don’t own the customer right out but the service can be very effective ie. Service Magic, there is also affiliate advertising but I consider that a completely different animal and not necessarily useful to the small business guy.
What should I use and How Do I use it?
Assuming you have a web site and it does a good job of converting browsers to customers, then CPC – cost per click is by far the cheapest form of advertising available other than word of mouth. We’ll explore CPC later this week in another post. The other advantage of CPC advertising is that usually you can target it to only show to people in a specific postal code who search for a specific term at a specific time of day. This is great if you have a limited budget to spend on advertising and you want to drive extremely targeted traffic. Traffic of this type is often looking to buy. Can you get any better than that?
Using CPM also assumes that you have a web site and it does a good job converting browsers to customers. The problem with CPM is that you will pay for the number of impressions (Number of times users of a web site see the ad) no matter how many clicks you get. The one traditional advantage over cpc is that you can control your costs. However in recent years you can now control you cpc costs much more effectively and generally target your audience much more effectively. However if you find a blog that speaks about your industry and seems to target your local market then CPM might be effective but generally I’d recommend against it.
CPL – cost per lead advertising is generally much more expensive and while you may find some platforms that don’t require you to have a web site most web-based CPL programs will expect that you do have a web site and it should generally be good about converting browsers to customers. The best CPL programs work by consolidating a group of businesses such as home improvement assuring that you meet a set of standards and then offer a number of programs to provide you leads to gain their customer’s business. These sites gamble that they can use other forms of advertising to drive traffic to their site cheaply and then turn over the lead to you to follow-up on. The real value to you is the lead is truly pre-qualified. There are companies out there that don’t do a good job of pre-qualification and you’ll end up wasting money so be careful when using this type of service and check it out thoroughly.
Jake’s where everybody who walks in is a ”Legend.” Jake’s is still a central point in the small town where I grew up in NEPA, that is North East Pennsylvania for those who are un-initiated and pronounced Nee-Pa. If you walk into Jake’s on a Saturday all the men in town will be there talking about sports, friends, politics and business. Everyone who walks in knows the conversation and Jake knows everyone. If you aren’t able there on a Saturday morning then you can go in the middle of the week and Jake will catch you up. The environment in that type of business creates friendships, contacts and generates additional business. If someone comes into the shop and says I’ve been having a problem with my water heater Jake or someone else will say oh, call Larry he’ll fix it right up. You need some advertising cha-cha’s Call Big Scotty Schoenberg down at Brucelli.
Now obviously not everybody goes into the barber every week and in most towns there just aren’t those kind of shops where everybody knows whats going on. It’s difficult to find that neighborhood spot because like I said in my post on Neighborhoods they just do not exist in most towns the way they use to. So whats the point and why are we talking about a barber shop?
In today’s world the neighborhood is created online, yes even for you small businesses. You not only need but should want be involved in the conversations. The question is how? How should the conversation be structured? How do I participate? How will it benefit me and my business?
The answer is formulate your conversation just as you would in the barber shop. Talk about sports, friends, politics, business. Make recommendations for your friends businesses. Help people find what they need and find someone in the community who enjoys helping to make those connections happen like my barber Jake.
If you want to learn more about this conversational tone and become a “Trust Agent” Then you should check out Chris Brogan at ChrisBrogan.com and Julien Smith at In Over Your Head and get their book Trust Agents
They do a better job defining how to take part in this conversation than anyone I know. Although the book does assume you know some things like how to start a blog.
If you want to participate in and connect with people in your own communities give me a call, send me an email, ping me on Facebook or Twitter, or LinkedIn and I’ll help you get on your way. Alternatively you can just leave a comment below.
So today I review the process for registering with the last major local search search engine. Tomorrow’s blog will get back to neighborhoods. We’ll be talking about the barber shop.
Today’s video is about how to sign up with Yahoo local. We’ll cover signing up with Bing local tomorrow.
As I’ve been developing out my blog and my business service offering over the last few days I realized that there are two components to my strategy and I almost focused on the wrong one. All the other blogs I’ve written so far are correct and technically accurate. People of solid business minds who know this stuff will argue over different aspects or strategies for the best traffic placement how much value LongTail key words have, or how to use local Search. Used effectively any strategy will drive business. Here’s the thing, technical strategies are cold and have no feeling. The whole reason why it’s difficult to do business in a small community neighborhood now is because there is no neighborhood, at least not in Marietta ga. The square in Marietta is nice and does get some main street traffic but what if you own a business over where I live in East Cobb. Johnson’s ferry is basically a highway and main street doesn’t exist.
I remember as a kid my first job after caddying one round was helping at our neighborhood fish store. On Tuesday’s and Thursday’s we would get a truck in from the Jersey Shore. I lived in Clarks Summit, Pa a small town suburb of Scranton PA. It was a beautiful area to grow up in. We were close to the Poconos and had an amazing fall leaf season. We also had a main street. The fish shore was on it. So I’d go in early meet the truck and start unloading. David the owner and I hustled all morning unloading the truck. Of course he decided he had to go in and start filleting the salmon as soon as the scallop bags were about to come of the truck. Anyway after I finished with the truck I had a few different jobs from helping out in the Kitchen to steaming crabs to cleaning the place up and occasionally, once I finished everything else they would let me work up at the counter.
Well every time a customer came in I knew who they were. I said hi and I always made recommendations about what we had gotten in that day. It was a small town, a neighborhood, and I had grown up there, everybody knew me and David loved having me there. He once told me that having me upfront was the best marketing he ever did. That was because we were a small neighborhood and everyone knew everyone.
Today there is no such thing as a small neighborhood. Or is there? Is there a neighborhood and main street? Social media is bringing back Main street believe it or not. The neat thing about this main street is doesn’t just have to be in your local postal code and a lot of businesses have taken advantage of the global reach but how can a small business who really does only need to reach the local community participate in this social net working field?
The key is finding and building that neighborhood. Most of the way’s to build the neighborhood are easy and free but they take effort and some time. Using Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter, and blogging you can develop community. If no other business owners in the same community then connect with them. On your blog write something of value about what they do and who they are. Help bring them business from your customer base in the Neighborhood and let them help bring you business from their customer base. Soon your neighbors in the community will be talking about both of you and how great you are to all of their neighbors.
If you own a small business in the East Cobb, Marietta, or Roswell community I can help you find and participate on your main street via the internet and help you drive business while helping to build the Neighborhood online and off.
Offerings like the neighborhood co-op news letter will help you create the Main Street feel. Don’t forget to join twitter and subscribe to the @metzgerbusiness\mariettausers list. This list currently has 83 users that are located in Marietta inclusive of East Cobb. I promise the list will grow quickly. This list is set up and a free resource to anyone who follows it. This is an 83 person network dying to be tapped. I’ll be setting up a Roswell list and greater Atlanta area list as well.
If you don’t yet know how to make these social networks act as a neighborhood main street for your business, lets sit down and talk. I’ll help you develop you social media strategy so that your business has prime real estate on Main Street and you’ll feel good about helping your neighbors too.
I promised Saturday that I would get these videos up on Sunday but I guess I missed my deadline. Here they are a few minutes late. I expect tomorrow’s blog (late Monday night, early Tuesday morning) to discuss a friends use of networking and the awesome opportunity he has for someone looking to buy an internet franchise in the Atlanta area.
Anyway, Here a brief overview of how to register with Google local.
And here is a short video on creating a coupon.
Google Local Search
Local search is a fast easy and free way to ensure your business is findable on the web. The major sites that provide local search are Google, Yahoo and now Bing. They all have their own sing up method and none are difficult to complete. The local search feature will not drive huge amounts of traffic to your site but it’s an important first step. The local search registration will be valuable when a customer is looking for you and is foundational to completing the three-step process I outlined yesterday. Lets take an example.
I’m Joe Average and I live in Marietta Ga. When I search the web using Google for “Flowers” from my computer located in Marietta. Google knows I’m in Marietta because I have either previously entered the information or they look at the IP address of my computer which will provide them a proximity. When Google presents the search results one of the first listings will be a Google map with local businesses that might sell flowers in Marietta or the surrounding area. If I’m looking for your particular Flower shop and you don’t show then I’m likely to find another Flower shop.
Two other important points 1) customers have the opportunity to rate your business via local search engines and 2) You can offer a coupon via the local search. These are two opportunities you don’t want to miss. Encourage your customers to rate your business and mention that there is a coupon out there to help encourage them. People love coupons and you can customize it any way you want.
As I mention above this step is a foundational necessity. The Adwords and social networking will truly begin to drive traffic but you want to be sure that you are findable through local search. Additionally on Google you’ll want to complete a profile so if someone searches for your name they can always find you on the first page of Google although it will be at the bottom.
Finally, I’ll post a few short instructional video’s running through the sign-up process for each of these sights. In another up coming post we’ll spend some time reviewing other local search options that will drive traffic such as Kudzu and citysearch.
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