Small Business Blog

We have a brand-new website, some great training opportunities, and a snazzy new look. Come check out our new space at www.betsytalbot.com.

The latest post on our blog is a book review of The Soccer Mom Myth, Today’s Female Consumer, Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys. It is great stuff, and you won’t want to miss it!

To keep up with the new blog, you can subscribe by email below or click here for the RSS feed. If you prefer to visit the site to read the blog, the address is www.betsytalbot.com/blog.

I can’t wait for you to stop by my new place for a chat. I’ll keep the coffee hot.

The Internet has made the world a much smaller place, but it can still seem overwhelming to monitor what is being said about you and your business. No matter what industry you are in, you will eventually have a disgruntled customer. Many will also have to contend with competitors who try to boost their own reputations by attacking others.

To monitor your name, I recommend Googling yourself. This will remind you of what people see when they look for you. If you have pictures of a racy Cancun vacation on your MySpace page, this might be the time to set that to private if you are developing an online business reputation. Then when you make a great contact you can be confident they will find the professional image you are cultivating when they Google you to find out more information (because they will!).

If you have a somewhat common name, odds are that people will have to determine which information belongs to you. There are a couple of strategies around this:

• Use your picture in profiles, articles and websites to clarify your identity
• Buy your name domain (www.betsytalbot.com) even if you do not choose to do anything with it now. For a mere $10/year you can make sure that a porn star or sleazy politician with the same name as you doesn’t steal your online thunder, or even insure that a competitor can’t buy your name and redirect it to their site.

Setting Up Alerts

Often when something is said about you it may not end up on page 1, which means you won’t see it until it has gained enough traction to make it to page 1. If you have a lot of time and a great memory you could Google your name and keywords every single day and scroll through all the pages (I hope your name isn’t Jane Smith!), but I am sure this is not the best use of your time. Whether you are monitoring who is talking about you or want to know how many times your product or service is mentioned online, Google Alerts is the easiest, cheapest solution for you.

How do you set up a Google alert?

• Go to www.google.com and sign in (if you don’t have an account, set one up take advantage of all of Google’s services - it is free!)
• Click “More” at the top left side of the screen and then “even More” from the dropdown list.
• Click on “Alerts”
• Type in the word or phrase you want to search for
  Use quotes around phrases to be more specific (i.e., “betsy talbot” instead of betsy talbot - without quotes always returns results on any mention of “betsy” or “talbot” on the internet - too many alerts!)
• Select Comprehensive as the type and choose how often you want the report
• Confirm the email address.

It is really that simple! On the time schedule you choose, you will receive an alert every time your word or phrase is used. You can use this to monitor your name, company name, suite of products or services, or even to keep up with the news on industry terms important to you. You can even follow news on your favorite author or business guru.

Monitoring your online reputation is a wise business move, and one that takes little effort and zero dollars.

Looking for a little advice for your small business but don’t have the time or money to consult an expert?

Check out the Microsoft Small Business Summit on March 24-27 for a virtual seminar on topics of interest to you.  The seminar is free and has some top-name experts I’m interested in, like John Jantsch from Duct-Tape Marketing.  Each day has 4 hours of live speakers you can access right from your computer.

Click here to register for the free event, then sit back and get some expert help from the comfort of your own office.  “See” you there!

Have you heard of Squidoo? It is an online community of single-page websites discussing everything from the best Thai food in town to the latest in technology. The founder of Squidoo is Seth Godin, who is one of my favorite marketing gurus.

The single-page websites are called “lenses” and are the viewpoint of the creator. You don’t need to know how to build a website in order to create one - in fact, you can have a lens ready to publish in under 10 minutes! You can even set up a feed to have your regular blog show up in your lens like I did.

Check out the lens I wrote today in response to Seth Godin’s blog post on digital coaches. It took me less than 10 minutes to put together. I will keep you posted on the amount of traffic it brings in over the course of the next couple of weeks.

Since it is free, can help your search engine optimization, and introduces you to a new audience of potential customers, there is really no reason why you shouldn’t Squidoo.

Have you developed a Squidoo lens? Share it in the comments below so we can all visit.

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a series of guest posts by Jonathan on website optimization.

Did you know you could do most of what an SEO (search engine optimizer) would do for you free of charge? For those true entrepreneurs out there these are the tools you should add to your bag of tricks.

First get the knowledge about SEO from Google. Google offers a wealth of free web-based applications such as calendars, analytics, local business listing and of course Google Maps.

Now that you have the tools and knowledge what do we do with it? First setup your Google analytics. Once you have it running I recommend checking it at least once a week. If you are getting more than 100 unique visitors per day then I recommend a daily review. You will start to learn how visitors view your site both from a browser (i.e. Firefox, IE, Safari) perspective and also how much time is spent on your site and how often they visit. Using this new found knowledge you can start to tailor your website to drive the desired conversion rates.

If the Internet was a road and a website a car, you just qualified for your drivers permit. So how do I get my license? If you want to your websites future success then check back to learn more about how to be your own webmaster and SEO.

Jonathan Chicquette is the unification of creative talent, pure energy and business savvy. Quite adroit in the world of technology, never missing the opportunity to educate those around him.