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Waiting for the Small Business Fairy to Bless Your Small Business

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: May 14, 2009; Category: Business, Marketing, Zeitgeist; Tags: Business, Economy, Humor, Zeitgeist; One Comment

Fairy tales were fun when we were little. The dastardly, selfish, and conniving were always punished. Meanwhile, handsome, brave, pure-hearted princes or tailors hooked up with beautiful, pure-hearted princesses (or beautiful, pure-hearted commoners) and lived happily ever after, often after some help from a fairy godmother or some other magical being.

Unfortunately, too many small business owners appear to be waiting for the Small Business Fairy to whack them with her wand, rather than adopting new marketing techniques with which other businesses have found success. If you’re one of those, you should know that I talked with the Small Business Fairy recently, and I have some bad news. The Small Business Fairy doesn’t have much of a work ethic, and she’s not ever going to get to you, no matter how brave, pure-hearted, or otherwise deserving you might be.

If you want to find your fortune with your small business, you’re going to have to do it without the Small Business Fairy’s help (trust me: she’s not coming). You’re going to have to muster all the bravery and pure-heartedness you can and start a business blog. And maybe establish a business Facebook page. Maybe even, you will need to "tweet." You, brave small businessman (or business woman) must hack your way through the thorny underbrush of social media. Having done so, however, you will be rewarded, as good fortune (and Google) smiles upon you. And there are people who can help you get there: no magic wands or spells, but sound advice.

It could be worse. There could be dragons.

Business Blogging, Part 2: Your Content Has Issues

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: May 12, 2009; Category: Blogging, Communication, Information Architecture, Marketing; Tags: Blogging; No Comments

If you’re like a lot of bloggers, you may have started blogging before you’d thought beyond a couple of posts. If it’s a choice between starting before you know what you’re doing or never getting started because you haven’t figured everything out, I’d encourage the former. But for a blog to benefit your business, it needs to focus on what your customers want to know or would find interesting. Google rewards more focused content. If you’ve got lots of posts about solar panel installation and maintenance, for instance, your blog will appear higher in search results for those items than if you have only a few posts about them.

One sign of lack of focus is a frequently changing tagline, trying to find a line that pulls together disparate, unfocused posts. Or, if you have enough self-awareness to know that your posts are going to be all over the place, you might plan ahead and make the tagline something like, "Global Warming and Other Stuff I Find Interesting." If so, you have plenty of company: lots of us have been there.

The thing to keep in mind is this: business blogs are not about personal exploration. You’re trying to provide content that your customers will find when they search for your products and services. And once they find it, you want them to decide there’s enough value in what you have to say that they want to subscribe and come back to read more.

So, how do you find the focus for your business blog? Before you begin blogging, sit down (with someone else who knows your customers, if possible) and make the following lists, as they relate to your products or services.

1. common problems your customers face
2. common areas of confusion for your customers
3. interesting developments in your industry that customers will care about
4. areas where your business provides the greatest value

The things that appear on those lists are what you should be blogging about, almost exclusively. After you’ve made the lists, try to determine what search keywords and phrases might be associated with each list item, and make sure you use those words in your posts. Review the lists and modify them as necessary over time. Things change, and you want to keep up. But more importantly, reviewing them (at least weekly) helps you stay focused and helps you develop new ideas for posts that will speak to your market. And if 95% of your posts are on track, an occasional offbeat post isn’t going to be a problem.

You might think this kind of discipline sounds like "no fun," and that your creativity will be stifled. But in fact, this approach does not preclude fun or creativity. It simply channels your creativity into something your customers will want to read: something "on topic."

Seth Godin: Why tribes, not money or factories, will change the world

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: May 12, 2009; Category: Business, Communication, Marketing, Video, Zeitgeist; Tags: Seth Godin, Tribes; No Comments

A great 17-minute presentation by Seth Godin at the TED conference about why and how tribes will change the world. Find other ideas worth spreading at the TED website.

Interview: Talking to the Small Business Fairy about How to Succeed

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: May 9, 2009; Category: Blogging, Business, Communication, Marketing; Tags: Blogging, Business, Humor, Marketing; No Comments

Recently, a post by Mike Dougherty of Network Solutions alerted me to the existence of the Small Business Fairy. Actually, he said she doesn’t exist, but we tracked her down and interviewed her about her job and how she helps small businesses be successful.

How did you become the Small Business Fairy?
Well, like most little fairies, I really wanted to be the Tooth Fairy: she gets all the press. I didn’t get that because—I’m not going to say her name, it’s against the rules, actually—”she” slept her way to the top. I have principals, so I had to look elsewhere. I was offered opportunities to be the Nuclear Non-proliferation Fairy and the Small Business Fairy. The people you meet in small business are, for the most part, just “nicer,” so I went with small business.

What are your primary duties?
I thought it was mostly ceremonial, but it turns out it’s a hell of a lot of work. I’m supposed to review all these business situation reports (BSRs) and decide who to bless with good fortune. When I was new at the job, I used to read each one carefully and weigh all the factors, like who’s working hard, and who really deserves success, and what are the local multipliers… blah, blah, blah. That took way too much time, so now I just send the BSRs down to the dart room.

The dart room?
Yeah. The elves down there (they’re not the brightest, between you and me), they tack BSRs on the wall 10 at a time, and then one of them, with a blindfold on, throws a dart at them. The one that he hits gets set aside for my signature. Then they put up another 10.

You’re kidding me! That’s how you decide which small businesses are successful?
If you can think of a better way, the suggestion box is right over there…well it used to be over there. It was getting full and suggestions were all over the floor under the box, so I had it taken to the incinerator. It’s much neater in that corner now. I should put a plant there.

So, does that mean being successful in small business is just pure luck? There’s no way to succeed just by “deserving” to succeed?
Are you from a really small town, or what? Of course being deserving has nothing to do with it! And it never did, from way before I took over this job.

But you can tap a small business owner with your wand and make him or her successful, right?
Sure! I do that all the time…well, at least once a month. It’s really fun. But businesses can be successful whether I do that or not. I’m not omnipit…omnipot…all powerful, you know.

Well that’s good news! How can small businesses be successful without your help?
It’s pretty boring stuff: managing cash flow, hiring good people and treating them well, offering good value in products and services, smart marketing, blah, blah, blah. That stuff is a lot of work. Most small business owners prefer to just set up shop and wait for me to whack ‘em on the head with my wand.

I’m interested in what you’ve observed in marketing that works for small businesses.
Social media is the big thing that works for most of the small businesses that get involved in it. Blogging, tweeting, getting fans on FaceBook, that kind of thing.

Why do you think those things work for small business?
Well, first, they’re free or low cost, so there’s not a lot of money being spent to reach their customers (especially when you compare it to broadcast or print media). And second, their customers spend a lot more time online than they used to. When they’re online for entertainment, a lot of them are on FaceBook or YouTube or some other site. When they’re online doing research for an upcoming purchase, or just looking around for stuff they’re interested in, they’re likely to find blogs that contain some good information, because Google loves blogs.

Do you have a blog or a FaceBook account?
Well, no. You know, I’m so busy blessing people. Plus I don’t know how to get started.

I could help you.
Really? Would it cost me anything?

I don’t know. Any chance you could whack me with your wand?
I’ll give that some serious thought.

Business Blogging, Part 1: How to Set Up a Blog

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: May 6, 2009; Category: Blogging, Business, Marketing, Search/SEO; Tags: Blogging, WordPress; No Comments

There’s no shortage of advice about how to approach business blogs, and there’s a lot of variation in the advice you can find. Much of the advice is contradictory, and finding articles here and there can leave you more confused than enlightened. So I’ve decided that what’s missing is my own take on business blogs.

Why should a business blog?

Though not really the topic of this post, I feel the need to briefly address it. If you have customers or potential customers who research products or services online, you want them to find you when they do their research. Blogs take advantage of increasing local searches and increased search rankings for often-updated sites. They are a way for you to gather your audience and engage them in conversation, building trust and long-term relationships. If you have expertise you could share with your customers, and you’re not blogging about it, you’re sending business that should be yours somewhere else. I have never talked to a business person who is actively blogging who has not said they wish they had started a year earlier.

How do you set up a blog for business purposes?

The first thing you need to do is select a platform that lets you own your data and have complete control over it. That means no free blog platforms that give you URLs such as businessname.blogspot.com or businessname.typepad.com. If you already have a business website, you should attach your blog to it, with a URL such as blog.businessname.com or businessname.com/blog.

WordPress is a good solution for this approach. WordPress can be installed free of charge on your existing webhost, either by your web developer, or via a program called Fantastico from your control panel (with click-and-install ease). Either way, part of installing WordPress involves creating a database to hold your posts. You will need to determine if your existing webhost allows database installation (if they offer Fantastico, then they do). If not, get yourself a better webhost; shouldn’t cost you more than $10-15/month.

If you don’t already have a website, your blog can be installed in your webhosting root directory, so that it is accessed by your customers by a URL such as businessname.com. More and more companies are building their entire websites on blog platforms. It doesn’t make sense for all companies, but it’s often a good choice for small to medium-size companies that don’t need their website to host online business applications.

Theme hacking and plugins

Once WordPress is installed, you will want to install a theme that can be hacked or tweaked to carry your branding. This part can be the most daunting for business people, and it’s usually well worth it to pay someone who can do it quickly and easily (but as a web developer, you’d expect me to say that, wouldn’t you?). I think there are some things it makes sense to do yourself, and other things that have too steep a learning curve for the do-it-yourself approach to pay off. And like brake jobs and home wiring, hacking blog themes is one of those things. Additionally, web developers can bring lessons learned on previous projects, which can benefit your blog tremendously.

While hacking the blog theme, you’ll want to install plugins that extend the functionality of your blog in various ways. Just like themes, plugins are developed by developers around the world who are part of the WordPress "community" and made available free (there are "premium" themes, but it rarely makes sense to pay for them). There are plugins to do almost anything you have a need for. Want a gallery? There are a bunch of plugins for that. Want an event calendar? There are plugins for that. Want to ping Google every time you write a post? Now you’re talking about my favorite plugin.

In Business Blogging, Part 2, we’ll look at how you should approach your blog content.