Jeffrey Eisenberg explains, in real, raw, talk, what he thinks makes a small business successful. Jeffrey Eisenbergy is a two-time New York Times best selling author and Internet Marketing pioneer.
In my final question, I ask Bob Childress of Chick-Fil-A in Roanoke, VA, how he has adapted to the new world of social. He discusses his apprehension to get started and addresses the question, “how do you deal with negative comments about your company on Facebook?”
Here’s a super simple way to compare the traffic counts for websites. Just go to www.compete.com or www.quantcast.com. Both are free. You can type in the names of websites and compare which one’s get the most traffic. Quantcast lets you find out quite a bit more at no charge.
How you can use this for your marketing purposes is to find out which sites get the most traffic and study what they’re doing to generate it. What I found with our regional clients is that the one’s that do the most amount of mass media along with internet marketing having the highest traffic counts. You might find something different in your research. The point really is to research before you take a step in any direction and these are great tools for doing that.
I was hiking yesterday to the Cascades which is located in the New River Valley in Virginia. I go there about 5-6 times per year with Allen and dragged my 17 year old daughter this weekend (kicking and screaming). It was Memorial Day weekend so the main path was crowded. When we arrived at the falls there wasn’t even a space for
Cascades, Pembrook, VA
us to sit down. Of course it kicked my marketing mind into gear to see all those people in one place.
Several of my friends own health related businesses and it occurred to me, from a guerilla marketing standpoint, that they could really take advantage of the hot spots for hikers in our region in two ways. First, why not take a few people with backpacks full of great protein bar samples and water to the falls and just sit there and hand them out to people when they arrive with coupons for their businesses. Talk about your target market and people that would appreciate them for making that effort!
Or even better to reach more people, why not use your blog, if you are in the health and wellness industry, to help coordinate hiking groups, or give the best hiking trails in our area, or tips for the best items to pack for each of the trails. Hiking burns more calories than just walking and it’s a whole lot more fun. If you don’t have time to create it, collaborate with someone that does. There is a great site on-line for some of these things, but they don’t have a company behind them with great products and services to keep you in shape after your hike.
People who are getting into shape or who are already there and are looking to stay that way, live active lifestyles and spend a lot of money on great health food and ways to stay fit. Go where your customers are. Serve them with information to stay that way. They’ll reward you with becoming loyal customers.
Ira Kaufman sent me this article and I thought I would pass along some stats that I thought you mind find helpful when you are feeling like a wave has already come and gone in social media and internet marketing. There’s a whole lot of hype right now, data being collected, and beta tests going on, but the eyes and ears of most people are still on tv, radio and newspaper.
Here’s a link to the whole article: http://www.commcreative.com/blog/2009/12/exagerating-death-traditional-media/
Thanks, IRA 
If you are working hard to build fans on your Facebook page, now there’s a new, free website that can help you find out what all that sweat equity has built for you. Just go to http://evaluator.vitrue.com/.
We continue to test ways to build Facebook page fan counts and also are conducting studies on the effectiveness of different types of advertising available through Facebook. Our beta tests have not given us enough consistent data to be conclusive but we’ll keep you posted.
How to use WordPress.org. YES! There are three different types of WordPress’. I know… who knew? If you just want to fool around with a personal blog, just go to WordPress.com and set up a quick blog and get started, but if you have a domain name you want to use like I did, www.lyndamcnuttfoster.com, then I had to set that puppy up by going to www.wordpress.org. Actually, I bypassed that all together and went to www.hostgator.com and bought this super cheap website hosting accounting and had that site upload WordPress for me… much easier!
This stuff will drive you completely nuts if you have an entreprenuer mind like mine. It’s taken me months to learn enough to even know this much. I’ll keep passing along knowledge as I get it because small business owners really need to be learning about this WordPress hysteria that’s going on. Everyone is all distracted by Facebook and the truth is that the business applications for a blog in WordPress will grow businesses much faster.
A huge THANK YOU to one of our Synergy Session leaders, Brian Duvall, for all his help answering all of my questions.
