Posted by Darby on April 11, 2009 under Getting Traffic | 
How does the global world wide web fit in with the business model of a local business? Good question.
Why have a website that shows your business to the whole world when your potential customers are just around the corner or perhaps in the next suburb?
Well that’s the way the web works. There are many ways you can home in on the best prospects for your local business.
Suppose you are a consultant for a wine business such as Traveling Vineyard. You can organise tatsing for people in your own neighborhood or perhaps city-wide. But you need a flow of prospects to be exposed to your offer. How do you find them?
Sure, the company gives you a “website” but does it work? Does it give you a steady flow of potential clients? See this article to see why you need your own content based website.
There is a better way. You can have your own site to build and diversify your wine based business. A free Local Business Masters course is available. It can be downloaded so you can print it off and read it at your liesure. There’s even some nifty advice about how you can print it off without wasting lots of paper. The course takes you through the process of building a content based website for your local business.
You can do it yourself, build it while you are enrolled in a ecommerce course or get an expert to set one up for you. You don’t need to know about complex coding languages, but you do need to do some thinking about how your potential clients use the internet and how they will find you.
Behind the banner below is some information that will give you some information about where to start on the great adventure of launching your business into cyberspace.
Posted by Darby on March 31, 2009 under Getting Traffic, Squidoo |
Squidoo is a rapid way to increase your reach on the web. You create a minisite (lens) about some small niche.
In that site you can
- Link back to your main site
- Capture leads
- Make a little money on the side via affiliate programs
Squidoo allows members to create Lenses. These are one page sites devoted to a small niche, say “wine tasting parties in Austin, Texas or the “emerging wineries in the Grand Valley Region of Colorado”
How to Build Your First Lens
Ready
Choose a topic that you know something about. That way you won’t have to do much research and you wont damage your credibility by making a boo–boo.
You should also prepare a short outline about what you want to say. Squidoo lenses are like all other pages on the web - if they don’t have something to say then they will be rarely visited and certainly won’t induce people to click through to your main site.
Make sure the topic is related to your main business. You want to attract readers who may interested in becoming customers.
Aim
Go over to Squidoo and sign up for a lens. It’s very easy, quick and free.
Chose a name with hyphens, its easier for humans and search engines to read. So use ‘wine-bars-in-austin-texas’ rather than ‘winebarsinaustintexas’ the address of your lens will be www.squdidoo.com/wine-bars-in-austin-texas
You can opt to take any cash you earn or donate to charity. Actually it doesn’t matter as you can change your options later. Lenses are very easy to update, both in content and settings.
FIRE!
Now you are ready to go.
Once you have registered for your first lens you will be taken to the editing page for your first lens. The instructions are fairly clear, but there is a bit of learning to do at first.
Don’t get too hung up on what you do first up. It’s very easy to edit your lens.
You will use mainly Text Modules to start with. There are dozens of types modules but a good lens needs only a few. If you don’t understand what a module is about just skip it. You can come back and add it later if you wish.
Use the Guestbook module. Feedback from your readers is extremely valuable, and it makes your lens look alive.
If you have an existing blog you can display the contents of your blog on your lens.
Write clearly and check your work for misspellings and typos, remember you are trying to build credibility.
It is a good idea to finish with a text box with a short message including a link to your main site for further information.
In your first lens you will be prompted to insert a bio. make sure you mention your major business with a link of course. A photo adds credibility.
Maintaining your lens
You can log in to your dashboard from time to time and check on the stats etc for your lens(es)
If your lens is doing well add a module or two from time to time. Fresh lenses rank better.
If you lens is not doing well you can tweak it a little but don’t waste too much time on it. You may be better just leaving it and starting another lens from a different angle. You can have as many as you like.
Link to your lens from appropriate places on other lenses, blogs and websites you have.
Check the referrers stats on your main site to see if your lenses are generating any traffic for you.
