Will Hanke

In St. Louis, every March and October the Yellow Pages (YP)  are delivered to the homes and businesses across the area.  These new phone books replace the ones delivered the year prior.  Delivery dates may be the same across the country, I’m not sure.

Many of you know that I do some web work on an Army contract several days a week in the Federal Center in downtown St. Louis.  Well, I make it a point to watch for the new phone books, which showed up around March 8th this year.  Because of the large amount of worker bees here (about 250), they wheel the phone books in on pallets and put them in the hallway.  Then the worker bees can just come by and grab a new book (and put their old one in a recycle bin).

This year, I kept tabs on the amount of phone books.  Over the period of 38 days, about 16 phone books were taken from the pallet of 200.

Sixteen books.

Just for giggles, I visited a few of the other floors in the building to see how many phone books were still sitting around.  Every floor (except for the IRS area) had about the same amount of books remaining on their pallets.

They finally wheeled them out yesterday. I hope they went to a recycling center somewhere.

Mr. Small Business owner, what does this tell you about the future of Yellow Page advertising?  Are you still spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on YP ads?  Your audience is shrinking, and your money is being wasted.

I have a few clients who are ahead of the curve when it comes to Internet Marketing.  They recognized the poor use of their marketing budgets with YP and have since scaled back their spending on these sources, and have put that money into building their online presence through blogging and link building.  They are reaping huge harvests on their well-placed seeds.

I’m not saying to drop your YP ad.  In fact, I think it’s still a viable source of traffic, particularly if your target audience is over the age of 50.  But I am saying don’t put so much money into it any more.  A simple ad with your company name, phone number and URL is all you need.

Shameless Plug: Quit wasting money on dying forms of marketing/advertising. Put that money into hiring someone (like me) that will help your business continue to grow and thrive. Create a presence and a following online, provide outstanding customer service, and the customers will come.

Will customer service, local marketing, small business, trending, yellow pages

Ok I’ll get straight to the point - I eat in the bathroom.  Sometimes in my car, too.

You see, I’m part of a growing group of folks who carry the Internet everywhere they go. Between the iPhone, PDAs and other Internet-enabled devices, getting online is no longer something you need to visit the library to do.

For instance: Every night my wife asks me to take her up to the tanning salon, and I do.  While she goes in, gets naked and scorches her skin, I sit in the truck and read interesting RSS feeds with my Treo via Google Reader.  It’s a nice 20 or so minutes alone where I can catch up on some of my favorite SEO bloggers.

You’ve Got to Make It Easy to Get to Your Content

My cellphone’s  interface isn’t the best, and those buttons are mighty tiny to push, so I prefer not to push more than I have to.  So I’d prefer to click and get straight to the full text, not read a small portion and then have to click 1 for the original post.  Three clicks just to read what you’re blabbering about?

What’s even worse is feeds like Sphinn’s Top Ten.  At first I thought - wow, cool - all the good stuff on one page.  Then I started to read them on the Treo, and what a headache.  First I get the summary feed, which upon clicking takes me to the sphinn Top-Ten page (full of summaries) where I have to click it again.  Then it takes me to the Sphinn page where (once again) there’s the description, some comments, and oh - a link to the actual post.

Your feed should not be this difficult to get to.  People subscribed to read your content, get it to them immediately.

Offer Multiple Feeds

Since you already know how important a blog is to your business, you must also understand that providing a convenient way for people to read your blog is just as important.  What’s the point of posting if no one can read it?

I suggest to my clients that they offer multiple feeds on their website - a summary feed, and a full text feed.

A summary feed is a RSS feed that contains the first 30 or so words of your blog post.  It’s quick to download, and people can decide quickly whether or not they want to read the rest of your post.  The biggest con is that it requires the person to click and download the full post.  When you’ve got limited time, a slow connection, or a small phone, this may not be the best choice.

A full text feed contains the entire text of every post.  This is a great option for those (like me) who prefer to download once and not have to click (and wait) to read the rest.

SEO Impact on Multiple Feeds

There are no real SEO impacts by offering more than one feed.  The entire point is to make it convenient to all of your readers.

Setting Up Multiple Feeds

There are numerous ways to do this, I’m not going into all of them.  Personally, I use FeedBurner’s services.  I set up multiple accounts for each blog, one with full feeds and one with summaries.  Then I link to both of those feeds in my blog, therefore offering my first time readers the option of how they’d like to consume my content.

Make it Easy

As I said before, the point is to make it easy for people to read the content of your website/blog.  Sites or links that require several clicks will send your visitors away to other, more convenient sites (your competitors).  Don’t let that happen.

Will RSS, customer service, small business

Dear Mr. Restaurant/Band/Coffee Shop/Nightclub Owner,

MySpace is for thirteen year olds.  If that’s not your target market, get a grown up website.  Seriously, do you have any idea how stupid it sounds to hear your commercial on the radio pointing us (the ones with the money you want) to your myspace page? Give me a break.

Getting a simple ‘brochure’ website, while still not the best and most practical way to go, is probably going to cost you less than $1000 including your own domain name and hosting.

Then when you realize that you need a real website, call me.  I’ll get you more traffic and exposure than you’ll know what to do with.

Will customer service, local marketing

I bargained with life for a penny
And life would pay no more
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store

For life is a just employer
He gives you what you ask
But once you have set the wages
Why, you must bear the task

I worked for a menial’s hire
Only to learn dismayed
That any wage I had asked of life
Life would have willing paid.

For those of you just getting started in SEO / SEM consulting, listen up.

Earlier this year I partnered up with a business colleague to do some revenue share for him.  Basically it was this: I do SEO for him and I get a percentage of the revenue that the website creates.  I actually do this for several local businesses, but I’m not sure that it’s the best option.

While small businesses love to ‘partner up’ with other business owners, I’m really having second thoughts about doing this in the future.

Here’s the deal.  You offer a great service, one that can propel a business (literally) into a new revenue stream. You have the know-how and understanding to create wealth.  And wise small business owners will see this and want it.  However, most small businesses lack one thing - money.  While this isn’t always the case, it has been my experience that a lot of small business owners want a lot, particularly things they can’t pay for.  Of course, who wouldn’t.

If I owned a coffee shop, and in came a guy with a laptop, having meetings, talking to business owners, I’d want to know what he offered.  I’d want him to market my business.  But I’m just a little coffee shop owner, I don’t have that kind of money to throw at marketing.

Just a word of advice - RUN!

My wife often tells me that I’ve got this soft spot for people in a pinch.  For some reason I feel bad when I see a business owner struggling, and I want to help.  I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes - perhaps they’re really bad at accounting.  Perhaps they are funding useless causes.  Perhaps they have no idea what’s going on at all in their business.  Whatever it is, all I see is the outward sadface, and I offer to help.

Most often she’s right (dammit!).  She sees me working for these people ‘in hopes of a future return’.  She sees the kids wanting new this and that, and she sees me working away, but the bank account doesn’t increase.  I can’t blame her for getting aggravated.

So if you’re good at SEO, and you know it, don’t fall for these things.  You offer a damn good product, quality advice and the power to increase sales.  Don’t let it go for cheap.

Disclaimer: There are plenty of reasons to help out a small business.  I am in no means telling you to avoid these altogether - rather I’m telling you to be wise.  If you have a friend that needs help, throw him some link juice. Do a small link building campaign. But don’t go overboard just to prove yourself.  If you want to do that, do it on your own website, not someone else’s.

Will beginner sem, customer service, money, networking, site ranking, small business