As I see everyday, many offline business owners are both overwhelmed and intimidated about taking their small businesses online. They may have been determined enough to get a website, but after that, well, everything just seems like too much — too many options and too much to do.
Well, I understand! I am right there beside ya! LOL
I was talking with a friend last night. She has an offline service based business but does have some products that she sells and which are unique to her and her business.
She has had a blog for several years, but like many us, has had trouble gaining traction.
I think that we understand intellectually how online promotion works and we know that business blogging is a good way to promote an offline business online… but emotionally, it can be difficult to grasp.
DO people READ business blogs from just regular folks?
I mean, really… does this actually work for a small, local business?
I started planning on Friday night…
I had two blogs that I wanted to reorganize and start heavily promoting. They are part of this year's strategy and I REALLY want to get them active and productive.
Both of them are WordPress sites and I had created new themes for them using Artisteer — one of the best buys of the last year, btw!
I had tweaked the look of each site but, more importantly, I was trying a new layout, based on a successful blog. I had analyzed the layout of that blog and decided that I could come pretty close using Artisteer…
OK, I get the themes uploaded and activated. I did spend some time tweaking, but hey, I'm a designer… that's what we do! LOL
Introduction
One of my common rants when talking about making the transition from an offline business to an online business is the need to clearly understand the differences between OFFline and ONline.
There are many obvious differences, but as I am sure you can understand, it is the subtle, hard to recognize differences that can be the most significant. This is in large part because you, the poor business owner, may be totally unaware of the problems those differences may be causing!
An excellent example of this is the online concept of *Keywords* and *Keyphrases*.
Offline, about the closest you come to this issue having to choose a category to list your business under in the Yellow Pages Directory… and I am sure for most offline businesses, there is only one YP option…
So… what ARE *Keywords* and *Keyphrases*?
The term Keyword refers to a word or phrase that an Internet user would use to search for online information. In many cases, the web surfer would be using a Search Engine to find the word or phrase. The Search Engine could search the entire internet, as Google does, or merely search a specific website, such a looking for a specific book or author on Amazon.com.
Keyword refers to a general search such as the term *golf club*.
Keyphrase refers to a more detailed and targeted search such as
*Callaway Big Bertha 08 Individual Iron (Sand Wedge) *.
Keywords and keyphrases offer insight into what online visitors are looking for, they can provide information about products sought, or information that is needed. They help make up for the minimal interaction between an online business owner and his targeted customer.
Why ARE Keywords and Keyphrases Significant?
Keywords and keyphrases are what drive the external Search Engines, such as Google. In this way, they provide valuable opportunities to get websites and specific web pages seen.
Read the rest of this entry »
I just got off to the phone, talking to my baby sister in PA/DE (she lives in PA about 4-5 miles from the DE state line and works in DE) They have 27 inches from the weekend blizzard and just got another 14 or so yesterday!
She expects to be home from work, she works at a nearby college, for the rest of the week. This got me thinking about Small Businesses and how they are affected by the local (geographical) weather.
Does YOUR small business have a WEATHER POLICY?
- Is it CLEARLY stated on your website?
- Can it be easily found? In other words, is there a clearly marked, direct link somewhere on all of the major pages of the site?
Read the rest of this entry »
We all know that running an off-line business takes an incredible amount of time, and I'm sure that you've realized by now that the Internet offers a myriad of ways to promote your off-line business.
The question becomes, which of these online promotional opportunities makes the most sense for an offline business?
I firmly believe that Twitter is one of those online marketing opportunities that you NEED to make time for!
While creating and running a Twitter marketing plan does take thought and effort, there are many tools and methods available to make it easier to accomplish your Twitter tasks… and as it stands now, Twitter has the potential to become an extremely important part of YOUR online marketing puzzle.
Why Twitter? you may ask.
In September 2009, Google introduced their newest web gizmo, the Sidewiki. In simple terms, it allows anyone (registered with a Gmail account) to leave comments on your site … and YOU have NO control! Ignoring the copyright issues (of which there are MANY) this means that
- ANYONE who is registered to do so can LEAVE COMMENTS on ANY page of your web site.
- ANYONE with the Google Toolbar installed can READ THOSE COMMENTS
- YOU HAVE NO RECOURSE (at this time) to have those comments removed!
This is an important and potentially damaging issue for ALL web site owners. In response to this grave threat, I wrote a Google Sidewiki Special Report, outlining the situation as it currently stands and offering my suggestions on what a web site owner should do in preparation… I posted about this issue on one of my Yahoo groups last night, and this morning, one of the members has replied with the following:
Looks like it is covered by the usual Terms of Service for Google so you could ask for stuff to be removed if it infringes copyright (then wait 6 months for Google to get round to it).
This is certainly a valid point… but in my mind, it misses the primary danger that the current Google Sidewiki situation presents…
Tink's Tips and Coaching Updates
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TINK'S TIPS
I have been working on a couple of Email related projects over the last couple of days… so this tip is an email tip Always use a accurate Subject Line, and whatever you do…
DON'T FORGET TO HAVE A SUBJECT LINE! I receive 1000-1500 spam emails to my main email addy — PER DAY! more and more of them have blank subject lines.
I automatically figure a blank subject line = SPAM… I do try to remember to check the sender info, but I don't always! If you forget a subject line when you send me an email, you have upped the odds of having me delete it as SPAM!
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NEW THIS WEEK CHEAT SHEET – We have a new Cheat Sheet, the LAST part in a 5 part series – *How Web Sites are Found*. Be sure and download it now because it will be available to BASIC Level members ONLY for this week!
NOTE – This Resource is provided as a ZIP file, containing a PDF file. It is NOT content on a web page. 
You will need to download it, unzip it and then open the PDF file in order to read it. You WILL be able to print out a copy, if you wish!
Here is the LINK – http://surviveandconquercoaching.com
HOW TO ACCESS IT: Go to SurviveAndConquerCoaching.com and check out the Coaching Resources / Cheat Sheets for a Master List of all Cheat Sheets and their location in either the Top Navigation bar or the Right Navigation Sidebar.
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VIDEO TUTORIAL – This week's BASIC Video is *How to Hide Files on Your Computer. Note – It was created for PC users, not Mac users… Sorry!
HOW TO ACCESS IT:
You can access the video tutorial by going to the Academy Access / Enter Academy Basic in either the Top Navigation bar or the Right Navigation Sidebar.
+++++++++++++++++++++++ All of these great resources can be found at: http://surviveandconquercoaching.com
Sharing the Road to Success!
Tink
The last 4 weeks have been an interesting convergence of events…
I had several sites hacked… repeatedly.
I had to have one of my computer’s reformatted and a new Operating System installed.
I had the databases for a couple of sites crash (who knows why!).
I am still waiting to see the final outcome with one of my problem sites.
While living thru the whole process I have learned a LOT and I am in the midst of implementing changes based on those lessons.
Here are some of my hard earned but valuable lessons…
I am VERY happy with the advice and help from my computer support guys. An enthusiastic shoutout here to Freddie and Maria at Kentucky Trade!
I am happy with the timely help and respectful communication from my hosting company. HostGator Rocks! Thanks, guys!!!!
It is much less stressful to face potential disaster while saying *Gee, I am glad I…* rather than saying *Oops! I am sorry I didn’t…*
After spending so much time and effort writing my Survival Course, *Disaster-proof Your Online Business*, I am happy to be able to say, *Do as I DO*.
One of my dearest online friends took the time to help me evaluate the process and my actions and grade my strategies. I was pretty happy with the results.
The bottom line is… bad things will happen to your online business. Do the best you can to prepare for them, and accept that you can’t anticipate everything.
Having the various elements of my sites backed up on a regular basis was a god-send. It is much less stressful to contact the Support Desk at your hosting and be able to tell them that you have full backups available if they need them. (I am happy to say that the fates were with me and my backups were not necessary, BUT the important thing is… I had them available in a worst case scenario).
Do keep your information available in multiple media formats, when applicable. I talk about this in depth in *Disaster-Proof* and I provide both text file templates and spreadsheet templates. Over the last 4 weeks, there were many times when I found myself using BOTH formats.
Since the people who know me best sometimes accuse me of being overprepared, I will admit to wondering a couple of times if I was going overboard. I am now happy to say… No, I wasn’t! LOL
As I said at the beginning, I am still evaluating the process, so look for one or two more posts sharing my experiences.
Sharing the road to success,
Tink
WordPress has come a long way in the last couple of years. One of the improvements I like best is the ease with which you can now add images to a blog post. Now that it is so easy, there is almost no excuse to not add an image for every post… provided you have an appropriate one available! Needless to say, most of my business posts aren’t going to have pretty pictures!
On the other hand, I do have posts where images would be appropriate, such as when I write about my vintage cookbooks. It’s now very easy to add an image of the cookbook cover. What would be even nicer, would be to be able to pretty up those images. However, there hasn’t been an easy way to do that, until now…
Thomas is one of my favorite online friends. Part of it is the fact the he has a graphic design degree AND a programming degree… which make for an unlikely, but powerful combination. 
His most recent project is a handy dandy little program the makes it VERY easy to dress up web graphics.
Called Tiger Web Graphics, this program allows you to import a web ready image and — in just a few mouse clicks — give it rounded corners, or make it look like a film strip, or a polaroid, or give it the serrated edge of a postage stamp.
It will also manipulate the image to give it perspective, add a reflection, or give it a drop shadow…
I use CorelDraw and CorelPhotoPaint for most of my work, simply because I need the powerful options that these programs offer, but, truth be told, I have only taken the time to learn what I need to do for the technical drawing and other applications I need. I know that they will do many other wonderful things… but I simply can’t justify the time needed to learn how to do those things.
But now I don’t need to learn to do a lot of them! Thomas has done the work for me!
One of the other reasons I like Thomas so much is because he understands the importance of providing good reference materials. Tiger Web Graphics comes with an excellent 45 page PDF help file, explaining what you need to know to get started immediately.
Here is a link to check out the sales page. Amazingly enough, this wonderful program is only $14.95!
Let me be clear… this software is NOT designed to be photo editing software. You need to start with an image that is already the proper size and has been prepared for the Web. However, if you have that, you can add these wonderful effects in seconds.
If you look below, I took screenshots showing the three steps needed to access the help file. I played a little bit and added a different effect to each of the three images.
Tiger Web Graphics is a very powerful tool at a very small price! I think you owe it to yourself to check out.
Thomas was kind enough to offer a 100% affiliate program for this software. That means if you use my affiliate link, I get the money! This means that the PayPal payment is made directly to me, so don’t be confused when you see my name on the payment screen!
I do realize that there are people online who prefer not to use affiliate links, but this program is so wonderful I don’t want to leave them out of the loop, so here is a a non-affiliate link.
Which ever link you use, I think you will find this a very handy program.
Here are the images showing how to access the Help File:
Step 1 - Open the program and click on the Graphic Icon
Step 2 - Double click on the Miscellaneous Tab
Step 3 - Doubleclick on the Help Icon and the Help Manual PDF will open
Let me take a moment to add that Tiger Web Graphics would work great for Business Bloggers, (it’s not just for hobby bloggers) and the images can actually be used on any web site. In fact, I plan to use them to add interest to the images in my next Survival Guide!
Sharing the Road to Success!
Tink
The only limit to marketing a business online is your imagination…
I LOVE to read ebooks and one of my favorite ebook stores has implemented a fun, and interesting marketing campaign for the Holiday season. Here is the link to the page that explains it:
http://allromanceebooks.com/contest.html
As you can see, this method not only provokes the interest of the ebookstore’s customers, it also drive NEW traffic to the site… and online, it is *All About the Traffic!*
Now, if you’ll excuse me… I am going to particiapte in the contest! *VeryBigGrin*
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Dear Santa,
I have been a very good girl this year. What do I want for the holidays? An iPhone/iTouch so that I can use Stanza to read all the romance I need from all the publishers I love that I buy at All Romance eBooks. You see, Santa, I deserve the iPhone/iTouch because…
It is time I FINALLY, REALLY, TRULY entered the 21st century! And goodness knows, I might want to read all of your marvelous books on something other than my laptop!
Happy Holidays,
Tink
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