You’ve decided to start a blog to promote your shop, connect with customers and drive more traffic to your website. What are you going to write about? Finding the actual topics to cover can be the most-difficult aspect of running a blog, according to Lisa Barone, cofounder and chief branding officer at SEO consulting firm Outspoken Media Inc., who offered several suggestions on where you can get blog post ideas in a recent Small Business Trends article.
Overhear Your Customers’ Conversations. “For small business owners who find themselves face-to-face with their customers every day, congratulations! You have the opportunity to eavesdrop on your customers and hear first-hand their daily struggles, what they wish they knew, and what gets them really excited,” Barone wrote. “And when you do overhear these conversations, you can address them both in your business and on your blog. Because if there’s one person who’s vocal about his fear of installing your product, you can bet there are more who aren’t being vocal. So why not write a tutorial series walking people through the process? Or create a video that shows people how to do it?”
Tags: Blogging, Company Marketing, Company Websites, Online Marketing, Small Businesses
Attendees of the 2012 Hotrod & Restoration Trade Show will have the opportunity to take advantage of a full morning of informative business seminars designed to help you run your small business. All of the seminars are free to attend.
On Saturday morning, ARMO will be hosting four business seminars to teach attendees how to market and run their businesses more efficiently. The seminars will be organized into two time slots.
The first seminar, The Business of Small Business, will take place from 8 a.m.–9:00 a.m. and will cover ways to take your business to the next level.
The Marketing Your Small Business 101 panel will also take place from 8 a.m.–9 a.m. During this time, industry experts including Eric Saltrick of Steele Rubber and Tyler Tanaka of CIE Studios will answer questions about how to utilize free (or almost free) Internet tools when marketing your small business. The panel will be moderated by Laura Bergan of American Collectors Insurance.
Read more…
Tags: 2012 Events, 2012 HRR Trade Show, Company Marketing, Dick Dixon, Education & Training, Small Businesses
Even in the age of social media, your business’ success is still driven by your brand its reputation, so wrote Mary Rosenbaum, a personal branding strategist, in a recent Fox Business article.
“With all the hype surrounding social media, it’s easy to take your eye off the ball of what really drives your business,” she wrote. “But as an entrepreneur or small business owner, your top two areas of focus should be your reputation and your brand. It takes a great deal of time to build a strong reputation and very little time to destroy it.”
You develop your brand not just through the products and services you offer, but the way you interact with customers, according to Rosenbaum.
Tags: Branding, Company Marketing, Customer Service, Management
As customers more and more rely on the Internet to find and research the brick-and-mortar shops they want to do business with, making sure your current customers are writing online reviews of your shop is key to bringing in new business. How can you make sure your best customers are telling their online community about you? The upcoming holiday season is a great time to encourage your customers to do just that, according to a recent Small Business Trends article by Lisa Barone.
In the article, Barone, co-founder and chief branding officer at Outspoken Media, Inc. an SEO consulting firm, shared five tips for encouraging customers to write those online reviews.
Tags: Better Business, Company Marketing, Customer Loyalty, Customer Service, Internet Marketing, Small Business Owners, Small Businesses
To keep current and potential customers visiting your web page, you have to provide them with interesting, engaging and up-to-date content. But when you’re working on several builds, managing a staff, answering phone calls and doing the office work, you don’t have much time to spare for your website.
All you need is a few minutes to keep your website current and engaging, according to Melanie Rembrandt, a search engine optimization copywriter, public-relations consultant and social media/content strategist. In a recent Startup Nation article, Rembrandt offered three tips you can follow to easily—and quickly—update your website.
Tags: Better Business, Company Marketing, Internet Marketing, Websites
Steve Chambers has operated Lockhart Machine for 28 years. He recently decided to put the machine shop up for sale.
Quite often when I’m interviewing a shop owner for an article, I’ll get an idea for another story. In an answer or the chit-chat at the end of an interview, the owner will mention a project they’re working on, an event they’re hosting or an expansion they’re planning, and as soon as I finish the first article, I’m already contacting the owner for another interview.
When I was interviewing Steve Chambers, owner of Lockhart Machine in Jasper, Ontario, Canada, for the September Better Business article about shop websites, he mentioned that he was considering selling his business. I asked him to keep me posted on his decision because that process was something I definitely felt would make an interesting story.
Tags: Best of 2011, Better Business, Company Marketing, Engine Builders, Internet Marketing, Lockhart Machine, Restorer Profile, Selling a Business, Small Business Owners, Steve Chambers
By Devlin Smith
“How do I get in your magazine?” That’s the question I get asked the most by Hotrod & Restoration readers eager to see their name in print but not sure how to make that happen. It’s actually fairly simple to get publicity for your shop, all you have to do is make a phone call or send an e-mail to let editors know why your shop is newsworthy.
For our upcoming September issue, I interviewed Chris Womack, owner of CW Restoration Shop in Huntington Beach, California, and a master of self-promotion. Womack has owned his business for just three years but has already gotten CW Restoration Shop featured on a national television show and in a local newspaper. How did he do it? In both cases, Womack sent an e-mail listing what made his shop special and worth featuring.
Tags: Chop Cut Rebuild, Chris Womack, Company Marketing, CW Restoration Shop, Publicity
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