You can’t interact with any form of media these days and not hear about Twitter.  TV, radio, print, web, mobile and face-to-face networking are all jumping in. Big traditional media, big business, big stars, big sports … all on Twitter.

But you, you’re not big.   You’re a small business and while you’re interested in tools and strategies to grow your business, you don’t know how to evaluate the Twitter buzz.  It looks like a time waster, meaningless chatter and something that falls to #524 of what you have to accomplish in your day.

You might want to reconsider. I could list out my 100 reasons a small business should get involved with Twitter, but I think having 100 different voices (comments) would be better.

So I’m putting it out to the Twitter community in the attempt to gather a total of 100 reasons or more to be on Twitter as a small business. Give me yours, leave your Twitter ID too (I’ll link it for you), and lets help those on the fence decide and all of us learn a new thing or two on the benefits of Twitter.

We recently released a website redesign for OutWest, a family-friendly horse ranch, show and horse event organization in Minnesota.

OutWest had been on the Site Management Console web platform for over 5 years, but the growth of their business and interest in new web features brought them to explore a web redesign.  In meeting with OutWest’s owners and staff, we learned the new additions of horses for sale to their offering and their desire to further interact and push event information to their audience.

With the new web design we pushed more of the romantic western feel.  Earth tones, torn edges and leather textures were used to create a warm, inviting and western feel for the interface.

The website project entailed:

• Full interface web redesign
• New features for events, horses for sale
• OutWest Blog & RSS Feed
  
• Email marketing integration
• Enhanced on-page SEO

The client has already let us know their excitement with the site launch.  We think it’s always great to see our long term clients become even longer term.  No matter the need for a new design, new features or additions, the SMC can scale and adapt with them.

We’re looking forward to the great things OutWest will do with the new website.  Check it out at OutwestArena.com and give it a big “Yee-Haw!” for yourself.

Two things happened last week that had me thinking about Internet marketing and the opportunity for success a business has with it. It also made me think about why companies seem to be held back from exploiting the benefits of marketing online.

Number One: Who’s The Crazy One?
The first was reading a great Internet marketing article from Andrew Eklund on MinnesotaBusiness.com.  The article easily outlined why Internet marketing is a dream (and reality) for any marketing team/person.  Eklund had some great points that anyone could understand and my biggest takeaways were:

1.  Reworking old and tired traditional marketing is not the answer.

2.  Ignoring the medium (Internet) where prospects are, customers are and that allows for complete tracking of your marketing to sale process is plain crazy.

3.  Internet marketing is not risky, not marketing online is risky.

Give the article a read and you’ll hopefully find a spark to push yourself into investing more time and strategy into leveraging the great benefits of Internet marketing. You’re crazy not too.

Number Two: Ignorance Is Bliss? No.
The second thing that happened was a scenario that unfolded in my email inbox.  I received an email from a business development person I know that contained their newsletter in a PDF attachment.  I froze.  They had a great email subject headline on a topic that I wanted information on but … they would never know that.

I couldn’t believe that the company would ignore the fantastic benefits of email marketing after all that hard work.  They put together a well designed PDF, it had compelling and educating content … yet it was only doing half of its job.  It wasn’t going to clue the business in on its relevance, performance and its outcome.

If they had sent this information via an email marketing program they would have gained these valuable marketing benefits:

1.  Who opened their email newsletter

1b.  Better yet, they would have reduced effort (clicks & time) to get to the goods

2.  What links users clicked on to get more info or take action

3.  The ability to fully track users from email to website to conversion

4.  They can still include the PDF version AND see who downloaded that

This marketing campaign could have been so much more.  Don’t just go half way, take advantage of the simple opportunity to get everything you want from your marketing efforts.

So to get to my title question, what is holding your company back from Internet marketing?  As Ecklund’s article pointed out, it offers accountability, sustained progress, sales, leads, return-on-investment, and deep business intelligence.  Let’s add to that affordability too.  Email marketing is an extremely low cost.  Consider though, at any price, the ability to track and measure makes any number realistic when you know what it produced.

So get rid of your fear (or ignorance), make the move, take the right steps, ask questions, get answers and find the ways Internet marketing can improve your business.  There are many.

In our industry we often hide behind browsers, Internet connections, email and our web designs.  Just where are these web design experts working everyday?  So here is a look at our office space.  We moved into another section of our 100 year old building this winter as we found a renter for our old space.  It still needs some TLC, but you get the picture.

The last photo is of our 1950’s Philco refrigerator.  It’s where we keep our web designs and ideas cool until we need them.

I was very fortunate to get to speak at the Buffalo, MN Chamber of Commerce Quarterly Luncheon today.  I presented on some ideas to help a small business website succeed, search engine optimization (SEO) and web analytics. I think I only put one person to sleep and the group had a lot of great Internet marketing questions in the follow-up.

There were some great Buffalo and Wright County businesses / organizations in attendance and I enjoyed the 45 minute presentation. Getting to share my knowledge and passion for the web is one of the best things I get to do at Five. Thank you to the Chamber for the invite to speak and present!

Speaking of presentations, we will be announcing a business blogging seminar soon for late May.  We should be getting the details out next week.

Thanks to Five web programmer @travisneids for taking the photos.