As I mentioned a few weeks ago, this ‘bad economy’ is a great time for your business to grow.  The down times are causing people to scale back on necessities, and the government is hoping that their new stimulus package will help some small businesses continue to operate.

As part of the stimulus package, the government has also increased the amount that a business can expense (section 179).  This one-year exception means that if you buy business stuff (a van, a computer, some new software) you can write off a larger chunk of that up front, which will help come time that Uncle Sam visits you again in April.

I’m not a tax expert, so do some research on the section 179 details.

This is a great time for small businesses to get their fannies in gear in relation to online presence.  I’m not going to rehash what I said earlier, but man what an opportunity!  Cut back on those Yellow Pages ads and push that money into your Internet plans.  You won’t be sorry.

There’s a local tattoo shop in my town Arnold, MO.  There’s nothing special about the shop, it’s just like most other tattoo shops you’d visit across the country.  The artists are good, the ink flows plentiful, and the business appears to be doing well.

But they don’t have a website.

Interestingly, they do have quite a decent online following.  On Yahoo Local, they’ve got over 50 reviews. They aren’t listed on Yelp. CitySearch lists them, but with no reviews. And the Google Ten Box shows them with some weird Arizona thing going on, and only 1 review.

So how does a business which appears to have no online presence get over 50 reviews on Yahoo?  I’m not sure, but I’d be willing to bet they are simply asking their customers to post them.

People that get tattoos are a ‘unique bunch’.  They love the art, they love to share/show their tattoos, and they are mostly loyal to one artist/store for their artwork. So the fact that they have 50 reviews on Yahoo doesn’t necessarily surprise me.  But it bothers me how they got there.

Theory One: People just decided to write a review of their tattoo (very possible), so they searched out the company on Google or Yahoo.  They all ended up at Yahoo Local.  Since the business has no website (or if they do I couldn’t find it), the Yahoo Local result is the first one that shows up in a Google search.  So that’s where they posted their review.  Perhaps its that simple.

Theory Two: The store owners noticed that people coming into their store had read some reviews on Yahoo, and the owners keyed in to the fact that these reviews were driving foot traffic. So they started asking people to add their review, thus driving more (hopefully) walk-in traffic.  They saw the social potential and revenue increase from the reviews, but haven’t quite grasped the concept of the overall web as a revenue stream.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts and comments.  How do you think they got all those reviews? What did I miss?

If you run a local community or small business website and are needing ideas on how to get some free press, why not piggyback off the local items of interest?

There are two top news stories this week in Saint Louis.

• Flooding

I’ve already started a photo contest related to the flooding.  Take a picture of flooded areas, or perhaps a teenager filling a sandbag, or perhaps an elderly gentleman donating water to workers.  I’ll post the pictures, send out a press release about my contest, and get more traffic and brand recognition.  The winner will get a $25 gas card, which appeals to pretty much everyone nowadays.

• Anheuser Busch Takeover

Several ‘web-people’ have already taken advantage of this, launching sites such as SaveBudweiser and SaveAB. Smart because they’re getting free mentions on all the news broadcasts, radio stations and links galore from beer lovers and proud Saint Louis bloggers.  They’ve started petitions (even if useless, these encourage people to spread the word about the website) and forums to discuss the takeover.

Check out the news. Even if its depressing, there is still plenty of goodness to be found if you’ve got a somewhat creative mind.  People are happy to jump on a bandwagon, all you have to do is hook up the tractor and get in front of them.

Here’s a couple quick ways to keep up with the latest trends in your industry.

Set up a custom news feed with Google

Go over to http://news.google.com and type in your phrase. This will bring up all the latest news that mentions that subject. If you need a specific phrase, make sure you put it in quotes.

Then click on the RSS button in the lower left corner and sign up for this custom news feed. Now every day you’ll have the latest news about your industry right there in your RSS reader.

Over time, you’ll see mentions of related items that you don’t want to read about. I suggest you go back to the Google News page and rewrite your query, using delimiters such as the plus and minus.

Get Google Alerts

While the Google news thing is cool, it’ll only give you updates on actual news items that have been submitted. Since many people are publishing items in formats besides press releases, we want to be able to capture these additions to the web, too.

To do so, we’ll set up a Google alert with our same phrase(s).

Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and you’ll see this page:

In the “Search Items” box, put in your same search criteria that you used on the news site. You can use quotes and other delimiters just as you did above.

Depending upon how often you want these alerts, choose the correct option in the “How Often” area. If you’re running a news site, you’ll want to put the “How Often” to “As it happens”. That way you can get that info onto your website as soon as possible. If you are just trying to keep up with trends, leave it at “once a day”.

Now plop in your email address. Now every time Google indexes a new page on the Internet that includes your specific phrase, you’ll get an email.

You can use these same methods to keep an eye on your competition as well, your own business name, or even mentions of specific products that you carry. Watch for bloggers that are mentioning your business and drop a comment on their site. They’ll be blown away that you visited their blog and you’ll have an even stronger chance of getting future referrals from them.

By the way, this should not be confused with Google Trends, an online way of watching search trends over time. That’s a nice tool too, but not what I was going for here.