Another tool to help you manage your internet reputation.

First, I'd like to applaud PRweb for managing their internet reputation very well! Joe from PRweb commented on my post thanking me for recommending them...

Hi Guy,

Thanks for the kind recommendation and detailed guidance for people looking to increase their online presence or, as you mentioned, do some reputation management.

Regards,

Joe Beaulaurier
PRWeb

When I realized that Joe found my little blog, it reminded me that I should mention a great, free tool for monitoring what is said about you on the internet (PRweb probably uses something robust to monitor blog buzz, etc... ) However, a great, free tool perfect for a small business is Google Alerts.

Google Alerts allows you to pick any keyword or phrase that you want to monitor and anytime Google finds something new on the internet that matches your selection, it will email you the link. I use this tool to monitor what is said about my company, PRstore, and my clients' companies. Check it out!

In Celebration of National Entrepreneurship Week: My TOP 10 List

February 25th was the start of the second annual Entrepreneur Week. To recognize the importance of small business, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution in 2006 (Resolution 699), advocating an annual week in support of American entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship education.

Coincidentally, I am "celebrating" my first year as an entrepreneur so I thought I would share some of MY entrepreneur education over the past year in the all-so-original Top 10 list format...

TOP 10 LESSONS LEARNED IN MY FIRST YEAR AS AN ENTREPRENEUR

10.) Having a boss sucks. Having 50 bosses sucks more.
- Nobody ever told me the word "client" was a synonym for "boss."

9.) Two weeks as an entrepreneur is equivalent to 2 days as an employee.
- Time flies when you have to find the money to write your own check.

8.) There is not such thing as "paid vacation" or "sick time."
- No workie = no money (at least as a start-up company).

7.) The expression "it's a small world" isn't just B.S.
- I'm convinced that everyone in Columbus knows someone who I will have to interact with at some point. I've disliked people in the past, but because I'm relatively P.C., I kept that to myself and now some of those people have made me money! Ahh.. finally a reward for being fake! YES!

6.) Government is the anti-start-up!
- Self-employment tax, payroll tax, income tax, workers comp insurance, social security contributions, state tax, sales tax, city tax, making it freaking impossible to be legally compliant tax!

5.) Everybody gets paid... but the owner.
- I'm envious of my vendor partners. I cut them checks like it's going out of style.

4.) 9-5 isn't so bad after all!
- 8 hour days are a blessing in disguise.

3.) The best way to get approval is not to need it.
- My biggest pet peeve is people who respond to a huge amount of work and go right for the negatives/changes and make no mention of the 95% that was perfect!

2.) There is no such thing as stress or worry.
- Or at least I tell myself that twice a day.

And my biggest lesson about entrepreneurship in my first year...

1.) Everything takes longer than expected. Especially the money part!
- When you project future earnings, if your spread sheet shows that by Year 5, you can buy Canada and sell it to France... you're probably a little optimistic.

Do you know your internet reputation?

Have you google’d yourself lately? You may be surprised how much is out there about you and your company. Thanks to the blogosphere, anyone with a computer (or library card) and an opinion can publish information about you on the internet. Search engines will index this content whether it is true or not and if it matches a relevant search for your company, your customers will find it.

Here are a few strategies that will help a small business take a proactive approach to controlling its internet reputation.

• PRESS RELEASES
• Yes, press releases are old news but what you do with them isn’t. Rather than writing a release and hoping the press will publish it, you can publish it yourself. For less than $300 you can send a “search engine optimized” press release out to thousands of websites through a site called PRweb.com. Overtime, these releases will start to get search engine exposure and if written correctly, they will get better search engine exposure than that one nagging, unhappy customer who vented in his blog.
• You can be general with the subject of the press release but it may be better to identify a specific topic that you want to target for search engine exposure and center the entire release around that one subject.
• Take every opportunity you get to brag about yourself and put it on the web! New client? New hire? New product? Put it online!
• ARTICLE MARKETING
• This is your true opportunity to focus on a singular subject and dominate the issue! Having focused content ensures that your article will be full of the correct relevant keywords ultimately enhancing your search engine exposure on the issue. Particularly if someone is searching for you by name along with the subject.
• BLOG RELATIONS
• Bloggers have a lot of power once they develop a base of loyal readers. Sometimes, this power can go to their heads. However, most of the time, they are more than willing to give anyone a fair shake or a platform to share their side of the story. If you find someone posting negative untruths about your company, there are some cases where it is appropriate to respond. Be careful here though... some things don’t deserve to be dignified with a response. Pick your battles wisely and respond with facts and objective reasoning. Never come across emotional or defensive, otherwise you’ll do more harm than good.

Go google yourself. Then plan on putting out 10 positive things for every 1 negative you find.

A great video on PRweb and how it works:

I hate to say I told you so: Wendy's Drops Ad Campaign

My post in September was about Wendy's new "red wig" ad campaign with a focus on men and their desire for "hot, juicy burgers."

After less than acceptable sales results, Wendy's finally pulled the ad campaign. They are going back to the classy, comfortable approach that made them successful for so many years. I'm actually a big fan of the new campaign featuring an animated Wendy and the message that "it's waaay better than fast food. It's Wendys"

The new campaign better represents Wendy's traditions while still focusing on the key target audience of 18-to-34-year-olds, Kerrii Anderson, Wendy's president and chief executive, said in an interview.

"It feels like Wendy's again," she said.

Holtcamp said Wendy's emphasis on its quality food was getting distracted by the red wig campaign. [more]

I agree and so does everybody else. 68,000 people gave the old campaign a "Thumbs Down" on an informal poll on "AOL Money and Finance." Only 6,000 people approved of the ads.

For your viewing pleasure... one more time... (btw: This ad almost humiliates men... I can't image how this was justified in the board room)

Challenge what is normal! Rethink everything!

Yesterday I posted about digital coupons... now... SHOES.

This article on SmallBusinessTrends.com talks about 4 new types of shoes that entrepreneurs are bringing to market with mass appeal. First Crocs... and now shoes that actually have a purpose (besides looking foolishly comfortable). The shoes in this article are all designed around providing some type of hyper functionality. Who would have thought that anyone could be successful with "functional" shoes going up against Nike, Reebok and all the other major brands! These entrepreneurs were able to look at a product category that has been dominated, saturated and full of innovation for decades and still break the mold!

As much as it may seem that this posting is about shoes, it isn't! It's about remembering to never be complacent about your product or service offering, your marketing or your business in general. Constantly look for new, innovative ways to market, grow and manage your business. Start with the most obvious parts of your business and challenge the norm. Then, start to look at places you'd least expect to be able to make an impact... like coupons and shoes (metaphorically speaking).

Seriously George?? Not you too! ...

The next generation of COUPONS: digital!

Proctor & Gamble and Kroger are testing a new coupon distribution strategy that eliminates paper and scissors! Here is how it works:

Step 1: Visit Kroger.com and browse coupon offers.

Step 2: Pick the coupons you want to use and load them onto your card (I’m not sure if it is your Kroger card or if you have to get a special card… I’m hoping it works with the Kroger card).

Step 3: Go to Kroger, buy your groceries and present your “coupons” digitally via plastic!

I have to admit that I have never clipped a coupon my entire life but there is something about this idea that entices me to start saving! Maybe because it changes the entire “feel” of the coupon process. It eliminates the hassle of looking through hundreds of pages of newspaper garbage and clipping a few things that are actually worth buying. It also eliminates the hassle of organizing all the coupons and having them available when it’s time to check out.

In fact, it is almost like “pre-shopping” and loading store credit onto a GIFT CARD! That will be the appeal to non-coupon shoppers! It’s not about “saving money” it’s about taking advantage of free money!

When I heard about this I was so happy to see that even the COUPON business can be modernized and improved thanks to the World Wide Web.

If Kroger wants to hit a HUGE home run, maybe they should tie in functionality that allows users to make and print their shopping list online, then automatically show relevant coupons and add the discounts to the users card. This creates yet another convenience factor for visiting the website allowing Kroger to generate additional ad revenue from manufacturers hoping to influence what is on YOUR list.

Click here to visit the Kroger/ P&G co-branded site.

Search Marketing is for Everyone! Especially Small Businesses!

I talked to a woman yesterday who is starting a "pet sitting” business. She has very little money to invest and is only interested in targeting people within 10 miles of her house (with gas prices she would have to charge too much to go any further). She has done some very basic grassroots marketing efforts but has only generated four customers. Knowing that she really doesn’t have a budget we can work with, I wanted to give her an idea that would be relatively inexpensive and have a high probability of generating an immediate return on investment.

Let's see...

Direct Mail – No… very high cost per thousand people reached... out of her budget
TV/Radio - would take months to get results, target is too broad (entire city) and WAY out of her budget
Yellow Pages - I hate the yellow pages and only find it useful for companies targeting senior citizens. (Side note: If you are younger than 40 and are thinking, "But I use the yellow pages," you should really spend some time online.)

So, we need a solution that is geographically targeted, low cost and highly effective.

Behold the power of search marketing.... for small businesses.

One part of search marketing is the process of bidding on key terms that people use to find something online (i.e. pet sitter, dog walker, pet care). You can bid on those terms and your advertisement will be displayed when someone searches them. The best part is that you pay nothing when you ad is displayed. You only pay when someone clicks the ad and goes to your website.

For the pet sitter business, she needs to create a very strong landing page where she will direct traffic from her search engine advertising. The landing page should have very strong messaging, overcome objections quickly and have MANY call to action points... i.e. her phone number at least 5 times throughout the page and many "click here to contact us" buttons that are bright and shiny.

Then, she should create her Google adwords campaign. Here is the secret weapon though… Google allows you to only show your ads to people within a custom geographic area. In other words, she can tell Google to only show her ads to people who are sitting at their computer within a 10 mile radius of her home!! This way, she won’t waste money on people who are 15 miles away and not a profitable customer.

Once all of this is in place, she can start very slow with the campaign. She can set a daily budget of $10.00 for the first week and see how many people click her ad and then how many of them convert to a customer. If all signs are positive, she can continue to increase her daily budget and drive more traffic which will lead to more customers. If she is getting traffic but no customers, she will need to reevaluate the search terms she is bidding on and take another look at the landing page to make sure it is doing a good job generating an immediate response.

Geographic targeting is an extremely powerful tool for small businesses. Some other examples of how it can be used across multiple industries:

Home builders: new communities overtime start to display migration patterns. If you plot all of the resident’s previous addresses on a map, you can usually identify the specific areas people are moving from to that community. Geographically targeting those areas via Google Adwords is a great strategy for optimizing your online campaign performance.

Restaurants: most restaurant owners know how far people are willing to travel to eat at their establishment. They can set a radius around each restaurant or pick specific cities if they have multiple locations.

I often see geographically confined businesses advertising nationally through Google Adwords and wish someone would tell them how much money they are wasting! If you are a small business and have never tried search engine marketing because you didn’t think you could afford it, with this tool, you can’t afford not to.

Go to: http://www.google.com/ads/ and set-up your account…. Email me with questions!