Category — Marketing

Blogging is creating a ‘little visit’ with your customers. The secret blogging pattern is

• Keep Things Simple and Easy
• Do It.

Readers will be

• your present clients because they already like what you do.
• your future clients because the first readers told them or because they found you on the Internet.

Try to write 100 words, give or take a few. There are many free blogging platforms, and many of them have a word count tool and a pre-scheduling tool for your posts. When someone makes a comment, you will be notified by an email from your blogging platform. Then you can go to the blog to leave your response. You don’t have to keep checking to see if someone wrote a comment.

Your readers and the search engines will appreciate frequency more than a lengthy novel. Writing once a week would be absolutely great. Your dependable blogging tells readers a lot about you and your business, no matter what topic you choose.

A three line signature paragraph containing your contact information that you can add to every post reinforces your business no matter what the post is about.

If you’re thinking that it won’t take you very long to write all there is to say about your decorative concrete business, you may be right. But, you can write about many other things than just business.

Write about:

• Places to see
• Events to attend

in the area where you are traveling to install engraved concrete. Your customers share your enthusiasm for these same things. This is their community too.

Write about

• school events
• community events,
• attractions for visitors
• attractions that make your community a nice place to live,

Is a service group promoting a project or event? Write a bit about it. Holidays are ‘freebie’ topics that you can add to your list.

When someone tells you how much they enjoy reading about your community and your business, just smile because you have blogging secrets.

Concrete Connections | Marketing Connections

Your customers are connected. You’re connected. Your decorative concrete business is a mutual connection between you and the customers.

CONNECTION is how the internet in conjunction with social media, video, email, and all corresponding little tools work for you.

When you step out the ‘connection door’, remember what your mother said about wearing clean underwear. Because everything shows and almost everyone has something to say about it.

As mere humans, we have no control over when something will be said or where that comment will show up in the search engines.

All is not lost. We can have influence on the results. Your influence “power tool” is to be the wonderful decorative concrete business of your dreams.

As that dream engraver, you’ll produce engraving that will affect what your customers say about you. That will be your strategy. With a little strategy you can control your presence and availability when things go wrong or right.

There is a lot of internet conversation about how critics and issues gain control and just destroy a business.

This is not urban legend; it does happen.

Remember that the connection-road runs both ways. If someone has complimented you on your Facebook page, be sure to acknowledge them with thanks.

Your customers are powerful because of the social media tools available to them. You will be using those same social media tools and more to maintain your connection with them and create new connections with future customers. Connecting through response to their comments shows your appreciation. Recognition and valuable information encourages customers to talk about you to everyone they know, online and off.

All of this “connecting” feeds your N.O.R.M. — Natural Online Reputation Management.

Positive N.O.R.M. will keep pushing your online reputation machine steadily when you connect with your market and treat the members of that market as the valuable parts of your marketing strategy that they are.

As you move into the internet world to market your business, using websites and social media, there are some trolls out there phishin’ around for a chance to get around your common sense and security.

They know that many people won’t activate their common sense and native caution. Some won’t check into simple security measures that are set up to protect them. That phishin’ hook is just waggling and they nibble, nibble.

A recent example we saw came in an email, but the trolls will also use the phone to set off your panic system. The email said that Facebook had reset the password because of the unscrupulous people. But, sweet little old FB had been kind enough to provide a new one. Opening an attachment would get the new password. Oh sure! These trolls made a fatal mistake by sending that email to an account that isn’t connected to Facebook! Dead giveaway.

Sometimes they will slip in a website address that looks normal in the glance of reading email. Or the trolls get it too close to right. Is there a plan that we can use to get as much protection as possible? Hear this resounding YES.

Under common sense, remember to take a little time to get everything thought out before you panic at a warning that your account has been compromised. Or that maintenance on the website means you need to do something about your information. Be suspicious of any excuse or offer. Assume that your trusted accounts will not send you an email asking for your password or make changes for you. If you still have a gnawing curiosity about the contact, do directly to your account and log in. Look for the magic address with https:www.website.com Trusted accounts will leave you a message about any issues at your dashboard. You can safely handle any issues. The trolls have been defeated once again.

If they can’t get us to offer up our precious passwords, they will send us a phony joke or greeting card that is laced with computer killing trojans, malware and viruses. Use antivirus service and still be cautious.

The creepy crooks have learned how to infect web pages and launch their invasions when we visit them. An internet security program that includes a checker to note approved web pages or pop up a warning to you can help you avoid some problems.

When the computer killers threaten you, call for repair help. During a recent plague of these viruses, victims were able to call 24/7 support and get a repair through a desktop sharing service. The repairs were far from free, but didn’t cost as much as a new computer. Think about the cost of losing the information on the computer down the drain.

No one is perfectly safe. They try to hook all of us and steal our treasured privacy and security. Let’s go ahead and be cautious. We don’t have time, money, energy, or computers to spare. In a final tip, if you suspect your defense has been broken and your identity stolen, the best thing to do is scream for help. Try to double check your activity and scream to those secure accounts that may have been compromised. They may advise that you scream to law enforcement.

Apply a little caution and enjoy your internet marketing safely.

“LinkedIn” is more than your sweetheart’s daisy chain. It brings power to your decorative concrete  business. People link together through business, professional, and personal interest or acquaintance. LinkedIn says, “Over 60 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities.”

LinkedIn is an online business networking group, kind of like your local BNI, so while you may very well pick up customers directly from LinkedIn, it’s most powerful at connecting you with other contractors who will need someone like you to be a goto-guy for decorative concrete services.

The links in this business to business chain are called CONNECTIONS. The connections aspect is a two-way street. When you become a part of someone’s network, they become a part of yours, connecting you with people whom you can help or people who can help you.

Remember, people like to help.

LinkedIn has a status which can be updated similar to Facebook, so you can inform your connections when you have finished a great decorative concrete job and tell them where to see pictures of the finished work.

The sweetest thing about a LinkedIn profile is the attraction the search engines have for the information you’ve published there. So, LinkedIn is a good way to take control of your online business/professional identity.

Your LinkedIn profile is formatted like a resume. You tell where you work now and places you’ve worked. Plus, you list where you went to school & special training you’ve received.

Your LinkedIn Connections can leave a recommendation for you which is like a cross between a testimonial and an online “thumbs-up.” You can leave recommendations for them as well.

Your decorative concrete customers can leave a recommendation for you too. You would be surprised how many of your customers are already members on LinkedIn.  Your doctor, dentist, kid’s teachers, accountant and many more people are members, and they would love to add you to their connections.

Besides giving your profile such great exposure, LinkedIn has groups devoted to every profession imaginable. There are over 260 groups that are focused on concrete,  such as:

• Decorative Concrete
• Decorative Concrete Professionals
• Women in Concrete.

Setting up a LinkedIn account is free and easy. Get started today and let one more social media tool promote your decorative concrete business while you are out there drivin’ a Mongoose.

Your community, your company and your name could be at risk for the accidental critic that gets ahead of you in searches for information.

People are using the social media sites for TMI, (too much information), we know that already. Recently, I did a Twitter search for a small town in central Missouri. I wanted to see who was using Twitter and naming the community (claiming it) in their updates.

I found some scary surprises. “Smalltown” Missouri was only mentioned twice. One was a profanity laced update from a dissatisfied customer at a Walmart Pharmacy. The comment was picked up in a RSS feed and repeated twice by a competitive pharmacy resource. Her profane criticism was the only representation of that community that would show up in a Twitter search. “Small potatoes.” you’re thinking. Well, the pharmacy resource that repeated this ‘tweet’ is deliberately pulling negative information from the internet into their Twitter account. They don’t care what the comment is, they just want to put up ‘scandalous and sensational’ information to get readers to click on their link and find them. They are doing dirt because bad news sells. You can possibly predict the percentage who will see the original criticism and react. You cannot risk the possibilities for damage from the ‘scandal mongers’; you have to build your own reputation and set the pace.

Your best insurance against negative results in searches for you, your business and your community is ACTIVITY. When you blog or update on Facebook or Twitter about your business you are giving the search engines ‘fodder’ for their response to searches. Claiming your business on sites such as YELP.com and your local media sites which offer business listings is like having a billboard up that you can check, but do not have to keep rebuilding. Your customers can leave reviews for you on the local sites as well as at the local search sites we talked about last week – Google Business, Bing Local and Yahoo Local. Suddenly, you have evangelists marketing your business for you.

Your involvement in the online community steadies the online reputation of your decorative concrete engraving business.

• Consistent participation gives you the leadership and ownership for your business, name, and town.

• Because you are active, you will be able to learn almost instantly if someone is taking a problem online. Then, you can respond with the excellent customer service you learned about at Engrave-A-Crete University.

• Your activity will build search results that compete with the criticism and eventually come ahead of it.

• Your activity will speak about YOU; as the rest of the online community gets to know you, like you and trust you, they will be less likely to be swayed by negative criticism.

Hey, that’s YOUR territory; take some time this week and stake your claim.