I get to manage a lot of calendars as part of my life and there’s something I see people doing consistently to really hurt attendance of their events. From car shows to community events, people are truly limiting how effective their messaging is to the people they’d like to attend those events. But how do you spread the word about community events so that people will find them in the first place? Let’s face it - there are so many ways to deliver messaging nowadays that telling the world about your event is something that can very easily get lost. Even if you get to the right people, it’s still entirely possible that they will forget about your event when it rolls around. Every toddler in the world is very good at pushing the limits. They try their darnedest to see how far they can go before punishment comes down on them. Like a fat guy with at the bungee jump, they’re testing the limits. It’s a game of push and shove. And you always wanted a Crayon painting on your armoire, right? Believe it or not those lessons apply in business too. Well, you probably should’t be coloring the armoire with crayons or anything but it’s good to know how far you can push the limits. But, even more importantly, it’s good for your team to know how far they can push the limits. Every business still needs a website, period. Yes, you still need a website. But you you can literally build your own website in one afternoon and here are 10 tips to building your own website. While it used to be a magical space for those who created websites, today anyone can do at least a passable job with a website using some of the tools that are out there. With platforms such as Weebly, Squarespace and Wix there is no excuse why someone can’t have at least a halfway decent website that helps tell the story of your business. Of course there are still a great deal of ways to optimize and polish a website and there are people who have spent a lifetime learning the inside tips about Google and other resources such that their skills are still very much in demand. But considering how many businesses have zero presence on the Internet, anything is better than nothing. There are a lot of people who have been in business for a long time who are very, very protective of every aspect of their business. Whether that be secret recipes, ways of doing things, methods, policies or whatever a lot of business owners hold things close to the vest. But then there is another way of doing things that has proven to be very successful for some owners - that method is to simply give away all the secrets on a regular basis. I bet there are some people out there who just about lost their minds at the mere thought of sharing their secrets with others. But there is a business model for this. In fact, one of those is Jumping Rocks Photography who regularly share tons of information about the very core of what they do. And it’s a great business model. As human beings our journeys around the sun on this big blue marble trigger all sorts of events. For example, many of us try to lose weight come January 1. Others place huge significance on the anniversary of our own arrival aboard this vehicle. In these United States we celebrate those who have passed away in active military service on this day. This can also be a trigger for our businesses. Every day our customers and prospects are critiquing our advertising and messaging. Some are responding, others aren’t. For those who don’t it could be that what we have isn’t what they want or it could also be our messaging. So I propose that, at least twice a year, we look at what we’re doing to woo our customers and make adjustments. We all know that one guy who wonders why things aren’t going so well but tells us, “well, I’ve been doing it this way for 20 years!” Times change, customers change and, most importantly, competitors change.
What prompted this post was a local pastry shop that I go to when I get a chance (and when my waistline permits) that has some wonderful pastries. But they also have the coffee that sits on the warmers for extended periods of time and possibly the cheapest disposable cups I had ever seen. So I’ve never gotten the coffee because I assumed the coffee was as bad as the cups.
Did you know that Facebook Groups can be managed by Facebook Pages? Did you know that Facebook Pages can create Groups? Did you just say ‘so what?’ For some organizations, a Facebook Group can actually make a lot of sense. For example, clubs, trade organizations and that sort of thing. Recently I took a Facebook Page and made a Group with it that was only slightly related but makes a lot of sense. I created a Page, Road Trip Reviews, which is related to a travel blog and created a fan club under that Page for a specific brand of RV. The fan club has grown faster even than the Page with a very, very lively discussion allowing members to share tips, challenges and journeys. For lots of businesses it would not make sense to dilute your brand with a Group but, for some, this can be an invaluable resource. I was recently in a restaurant that I really like locally that had undergone some ownership changes and observed a few differences in how things were working including something that made me hug the owner. What was that single thing? Fish bowling. Now if you look in the Urban Dictionary for fish bowling you’re going to see something quite different than what I’m referring to so first let’s define what fish bowling is. Simply put, fish bowling came from business owners who have a retail location putting a fish bowl on their counters and asking for people to sign-up for their regular mailing. I remember in the olden days of marketing how we would treasure these names and would carefully create newsletters using a program like Aldus PageMaker to craft newsletters that would get printed and actually mailed to the recipients. Where are those PageMaker skills today? There are a lot of businesses that I work with who are vehemently opposed to creating a presence on Yelp and TripAdvisor. The argument these businesses have is that they know that people write bad reviews. And some people even write spiteful or inaccurate reviews. All of this is true. Surprisingly a lousy review be good for your business? Honestly. For any business proprietor who owns their presence on review sites it can be a tense few moments after you get a notification that you have a new review until you read it. And, when you get a negative review, the first thing you want to do is figure out who wrote it and determine the quickest way of insulting their family for several generations back. Understandable. Lessons learned from United AirlinesIf you happened to be out hiking in the wilderness for the past week, you may be the one American who hasn’t heard about United’s brush with a public relations disaster as team members forcibly removed a passenger from the plane after they had oversold the seats and needed to move a crew to a new location. What’s the lesson for all businesses here? Simple. In many ways, George Orwell’s 1984 predicted a reality that we live with today. Oh, not a dystopian world scenario. Just that everything you do as a business can and may be shot on video and shared with the world. And when you do something really, really egregious it may become a viral video. |
Tony BarthelTony Barthel is passionate about great marketing for small businesses Get Free Weekly Marketing TipsCategories
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