Category Archives: Business Networking
Marketing and Blogging: A Winning Combination
Today, I’d like to invite you to read my Helium article on “Business marketing: Why blogging is effective”. Let’s face it, a blog is where someone has something to say, and who has more to say than a marketing department? The manner in which a company marketing department approaches blogging can benefit or hurt the company immensely. In order to do it correctly, I challenge companies to first investigate why blogging is such a great marketing tool before engaging in it and shooting themselves in the foot.
Supporting Your Local Businesses
In these days of “Super” this and “Super” that of oversized brick and mortar shops that buy in bulk from China, you might think supporting your local businesses is old hat. Maybe you need to rethink this.
Do you care about where you live? Local businesses help support your local community, both directly and indirectly. Local businesses buy from each other, which helps out everyone because the money stays in the community (even the tax man benefits!). Reduced shipping costs can mean savings and a greener environment. The standard of living stays higher because money isn’t being siphoned off into other countries. Schools can afford to do more because of the growing community.
That’s just the economics of it. Think about an often neglected part of the story: the human side. Support is easier. You know the people, and they know you. Local businesses often have to work harder to get and keep their customers because they know that the competition for your time and attention is fierce. As a result, they are more likely to work with you and pay attention to you in a way that the bigger assembly line type of operations (in order to promote “efficiency” over all else) cannot.
Some people believe that working with the “smaller guys” just isn’t worth it. They might be here today and gone tomorrow. There really are three problems with that, though:
- It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You don’t do business with them, and they go bust, but it isn’t because of lack of quality.
- Local businesses are what give the local community its vitality and flair. They are the ones who give local jobs, fund other local merchants, help pay taxes for schools (or, at least their landlords do from the money they make from them) and are the most likely to sponsor local community events.
- Bigger doesn’t really guarantee stability or long term prospects. Enron, anyone? Chrysler? How about your state declaring bankruptcy?
As you can see, “the bigger is better” mentality is quite flawed in some respects. The problem is that one size does not fit all. There are times and situations that call for the resources of a larger pool of talent, expertise and/or labor. However, the reality is that it is not always desirable or have the expected outcome.
There are many ways you can support local businesses. Obviously, one way is to seek them out and use their services. However, getting the word out about local businesses that have treated you right also is a way to support them.
One of the most geekified ways to support local businesses, though, is to rate them online. Use technology to benefit the business in your and nearby communities. Just because it is local does not mean people don’t find them on the Internet!
Where can you do this? I’m glad you asked! Some of my favorites:
www.cleveland.com allows you to search for local businesses near your area. It pulls in a lot of searches for this area, and it is one of the best resources for finding and rating local services.
www.yelp.com is an up and coming list for local businesses and their reviews. Their tagline is “Real people. Real reviews.”, and they mean it. They have a review filter that seeks to smooth out any bias (for or against) a company. Other users can even rate the reviews as “userful”, “funny” or “cool”. From their help Common Questions page, under “Should I ask customers to write reviews for my business?”, they write:
Probably not. It’s a slippery slope between the customer who is so delighted by her experience that she takes it upon herself to write a glowing review and the customer who is "encouraged" to write a favorable review in exchange for a special discount. And let’s be candid: most business owners are only going to solicit reviews from their happy customers, not the unhappy ones. Over time, these self-selected reviews create intrinsic bias in the business listing — a bias that savvy consumers can smell from a mile away. Don’t be surprised, then, if your solicited reviews get filtered by Yelp’s automated review filter.
www.merchantcircle.com is specifically geared towards local businesses. It can also become addictive. Not only do businesses put up pages here, but users from all over can ask questions and businesses can choose to answer them. As a business answers questions, they gain levels of acknowledged expertise. Users can also vote on the best answer, which goes a long way to establishing good cred.
And, of course, there’s always Facebook. If you’re a business owner who thinks social media is a waste of time, you might want to check out the “5 ways the new Facebook Pages can benefit your business”. While Facebook has done some pretty bizarre things as far as personal pages go, they really have started to come through on the business side. It’s forcing me to reevaluate how I spend my time interacting with it.
As a Facebook user, you can now Like a business page, and you can see posts they put up just like when a friend posts to their wall. You can interact with the business just like another user, which is pretty cool as well.
While a Facebook page might seem a bit out there for some local businesses, don’t forget that there are all sorts of local interest pages on Facebook already.
Hopefully, business owners and customers alike will use some of this technology to benefit the local business community and the community as a whole.
Having a Valid Support Network
Seth Godin’s blog post about “Maybe you need new friends” caught my attention recently. It’s a short read, so I’ll just ask you to go read it.
It caught my eye because I’ve been looking at various networking groups of late. I’m still in the research stage, but there are some interesting and not so interesting prospects. I have been advised to make sure I get into one that is the best fit. There are groups out there with varying degrees of commitment and personalities, so, while there are some good ones, it is important to get off on the right foot with the best one for my business.
Networking is important obviously for the customer/client leads. However, I quickly began to notice that there is much more to it than that. It is important for educational opportunities because a guest speaker will pass on knowledge that you did not have before. However, perhaps most important, it is a place you can get emotional support as well.
Members are there for a reason. In a great group, it will be more than drinking coffee and shooting the breeze. They will meet together to encourage each other, give each other advice and keep each other accountable.
What’s your support system?
