Twitter: To Follow or Not to Follow
I’ve been on Twitter since early 2008 and to be honest, in the beginning, I didn’t always keep up with it the way that I should have.
When I first started, I did personally find it hard to figure out what the benefit of it was. For someone who tends to be pretty long-winded like me, it’s pretty difficult to say things in 140-characters or less. And I couldn’t figure out what the point of Twitter was. Read more
A Real-Life Lesson On Local Marketing
Filed under: Local Online Marketing, Online Marketing
About a week ago, I began to have problems with my laptop. Every so often I would lose the visibility of the screen. Moving the screen back and forth seemed to help bring it back for a little while but eventually the screen simply went “all white”.
As someone who relies on their laptop quite frequently when I visit businesses, give talks, or simply consult, this was pretty much devastating to me. I needed help and I needed it fast.
So I did some research locally for a computer repair business and found one easily with my city.
I clicked on their link to their website trying to find their hours, their specific location, a way to contact them and so on.
They had plenty of information on their site as to how long they’ve been in business (10 years), the kinds of repairs they performed, their email address and their telephone number.
But….much to my dismay, no business hours.
So, I checked out their Google Places Page…even less information was there.
So I sent off an email to them quickly before having to run out for the day (with no laptop in hand, sadly), and kept checking the email on my phone to see if they had responded.
Nothing.
Yes, I could have called them but quite frankly, I had already sent an email and was incredibly rushed as it was. I figured (especially in this day and age) that email would suffice.
Two days later and I still hadn’t heard back. So, over the weekend, my husband and I found the documentation for the laptop and decided to fix it ourselves. Which worked fantastically by the way. Turns out, the connector for the screen wasn’t plugged in properly within the laptop.
Easy fix, saved me $85 and I don’t have to wait for someone else to repair it, or send it off to the manufacturer and wait a few weeks.
The moral of the story is this:
If you’re a small business and have your own website, it’s incredibly important to place your hours on your website and within your Google Place Page. People need to know when you’re open – especially if you’re a service-based business.
Also your Google Place Page is a fantastic spot to put all of the information about your business that people truly want to know. Things like rates, location, do you require people to visit your store or do you come to their location? A little bit of information goes a very long way.
It’s beneficial to you, as the business owner, to use an auto-responder whenever someone sends you an email. This way, the person sending the email will know that they’ve been acknowledged and the email should provide information such as when they can expect a return email, a call back, or any other kind of information that’s relevant to the customer.
In the end, it worked out for me, I saved some money and ended up learning how to fix my own laptop.
But for the local business, they lost a sale. And I can only speak for myself but I’d be willing to bet that my situation is not unique.
You see people today rely heavily on information they find online regarding local businesses. They’re pressed for time, have children to attend to, have jobs they need to get to, and so on. This is one reason why people decide to forego using the printed Yellow Pages and instead head online; it’s simply faster and easier.
But, only if the local business can attend to those customers who do find them online.
So if you’re a local business, have a presence online and know how to deal with that presence properly, you’ll find that you are getting a lot more customers locally. When you can cover both sides of the marketing coin, off-line marketing and on-line marketing, you, as a local business have got a huge leap on your competition.
What have been your experiences regarding local businesses online?
Time for an update don’t you think?
Hi Friends!
It’s been a very long time since I’ve updated here and for that, I must apologize. Things have been really busy around here especially with my local business; lots of networking meetings, presentations, meeting face to face with clients and the like. Which is always good don’t get me wrong, however, my sites have suffered for it.
So I’ve decided to consolidate some information together on this site to make it more accessible to everyone.
Starting today, KristineWirth.com has begun working on a new design, with all new menu options for everyone. It is my hope that this new consolidated way of doing things will not only make it easier for you; but for anyone new who happens to stop by.
I currently run various sites including this one, BoneheadSEO.com, How To Videos, and my local business website, Wirth Marketing which is mainly for local clients.
This means that I have a lot of information to share, but that it’s not always accessible to everyone. So I’m going to place everything under “one roof” if you will.
This doesn’t mean that the other sites are going away, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it does mean that you’ll be able to get to the information that you want quicker and easier.
Anyhow, that’s just a very long way of saying that a new design that’s easier to use and has more information is coming your way very soon.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you again shortly!
