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For those of you from previous classes & past web marketing projects, I have a new website that provides free marketing tips for growing sales leads for small businesses and manufacturing companies.  The site is Marketing for Manufacturing and it provides multiple tips available through e-mail or blog feed.

Take a look at Marketing for Manufacturing and let me know what you think.

If you have any questions or need some marketing tips, just leave a comment on the new site.

Joe

This is a posting copied from a recent chamber of commerce newsletter article I wrote.

Many of you spend money to be listed in the Yellow pages and similar tree-based materials.  The search for products and services is rapidly moving to the Internet and you might be missing some great opportunities to get new customers.

Did you know you can have a free online listing and drive sales leads by using search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN?  At a bare minimum, you should enter your local business listing into Google Maps using www.google.com/local/add.  An even better solution I found in January is GetListed.org .  GetListed.org automatically checks to see if you are listed in the major local search listings.  It will then guide you on how to get listed.  I have done several of these and and have seen some good results.

I would love to hear how well your company performed.  Were you listed on most of the major search engines?  Did the change bring in some new sales leads, calls, or website visits?

There are a lot of people asking about the financial crisis currently going on.  Here are some of the things I believe are going on.

Why is this a financial crisis?

There are 3 main reasons that make this an actual, not imaginary, crisis.

1. The housing market is going to drop even more, which reduces growth.  EFFECTS: Reduced employment, increased unemployment costs, reduced tax revenue needed to run government services, and job losses.
2. There is significant risk that our government could have its credit rating reduced, which causes all kinds of problems.  EFFECTS: Increased inflation because our currency is devalued, reduced investment from other countries, and increased cost of imports because our dollar will buy less.
3. Our federal budget deficit is going to increase because of more debt, higher rates, and reduced tax revenue.  EFFECTS: Fewer government services, more taxes, less trust in our economy, and reduced foreign investment.

If we KNEW about the problems and the risk, why didn’t it get fixed?

Too many people were benefiting from the bad policy. Everybody was running toward a cliff while stuffing cash in their pockets.  Everybody hoped that the ride would not end -- even though people much smarter than me predicted the bubble bursting.  With the housing bubble expanding, even if you bought a home you could not afford, you could turn around and sell it at a profit.  Banks profited.  Real estate profited.  Investors profited.  Housing sector manufacturers profited.  However, a lot of low to middle income people were hurt as the bubble expansion started to slow -- they could not sell their homes and they could not pay their debt.  Now, most everybody is going to hurt.

What was the root cause of the "need" for a bailout?

A policy that was a good idea poorly implemented: affordable housing. Excessive debt and risk came from the mortgages and related mortgage instruments that were only risky if housing prices declined.  The bubble burst, housing prices dropped, and many people just walked away from their loans.  Plus, these same financial organizations got tied into having bad debt and not enough cash on hand.  Because they did not have enough cash, loans dried up in other areas which threatened other sectors and industries.

How did the problem develop?

This video on YouTube does a fantastic job of explaining the legislation and policies that brought the U.S. to this major problem, step by step.  NOTE: I believe it is a bit too easy on the Republican side (the problem IS from both sides).

Who is offering alternative solutions?

• Dave Ramsey , the get-out-of-debt guy, is recommending an alternative that makes sense.
• Ron Paul , the Libertarian/Republican, is recommending dramatic government cost cutting.
• Jeffrey A. Miron, a senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University, wrote an article on an alternative to the bailout that gets people excited.

Why are the American people so unhappy about this?

• Disgust with fear mongering and a feeling of being pressured into something they do not want.
• Fear of a government that controls too much and has no restrictions.
• Distrust of Congress AND the administration prevents citizens from trusting thousands of dollars of their tax money with a bailout plan.
• Political posturing instead of fixing the problem.
• Perception that the bailout is geared toward helping the rich executives on Wall Street.
• The problem should have already been fixed.

What can I do?

• Get rid of debt.
• Cut your spending.
• Take a Dave Ramsey class (or read the Total Money Makeover book) and get on a tight budget for tight times.
• Contact your congressional representation and tell them what you think.
• Consider voting for somebody else.  Challengers look a bit more attractive than the incumbents now.

How do we get through this??  Is it going to get worse?? Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.  (NOTE: Overly partisan finger-pointing to any single party affiliation will be deleted. The fault lies with the legislative & executive branches of multiple administrations, Wall Street, and several other entities, not just a single party.

There is another new website marketing article titled Website Marketing Questions from Class (Part 2 of 2) .  The article answers important questions from class like:

• How do I choose a company to get me on the search engines?
• Which search engine first?
• How to get on the search engines so that people looking for <insert your keyword phrase here>?
• Why would an organization have 50 or more web site addresses?
• What happens when a company asks you in an e-mail to add them to your contact list?

Are you one of the businesses wanting to avoid Vista?

GREAT NEWS: Some major online sellers have Windows XP available on new systems.  Note that you may have to buy a business class computer that is approximately the same price for similar performance consumer computers.

Dell has XP available on notebooks as a FREE "downgrade" option.  The downgrade option essentially means that you select XP as your operating system.  Originally, this was an extra charge but sales may have had some bumps that made the change happen.  Also, consider Toshiba, HP, Lenovo, and other major manufacturers.

NOTE: You probably will NOT find a Windows XP computer at a retail store.

Windows XP availability should be great news for those small businesses that do not want to start moving to a Vista operating system at their work place.

Another Option: Buy a Mac. I wish I had bought a Mac instead of the crippled extra Vista notebook I currently have.  Mac’s sales have jumped dramatically – especially in the business sector where Mac has not pursued heavily.

Give us your comments about your Vista experiences or your computer purchase with the Vista to XP downgrade option.

The follow-up articles to the Website Marketing workshop are now available.  If you go to the Website Marketing Workshop – Recent page , here are some of the articles you will find:

• Top 16 Website Mistakes Made by Small Businesses
• How to Get a Free Website
• Who Visits Your Website?  What Do They Like?
• Free Pro Tools to Define Your Website Marketing Strategy
• 9 Things To Improve Website Sales Tomorrow
• Avoid Website Mistakes That Even Big Companies Make
• 5 Most Critical Elements of a Successful Website
• Questions from Class (Part 1 of 2)

I will post answers to some specific questions later this week.

Image via Wikipedia

New Website Marketing website is LIVE

After much juggling and domain (website name) hunting, I have gathered most of the material from our class into a single website .  There are still 3 small postings that I plan to list before Tuesday June 24th.

The new website is called Website Marketing Workshop and is designed to provide a self-guided overview of Website Marketing.  Eventually, I may even considering offering onsite workshops through leads generated at this website.  I am currently talking with another chamber of commerce in Arkansas who has asked if I would provide the free 2 hour session and I believe that I will be able to.

Again, if you missed a point in class or something was a bit fuzzy…

• Go to WebsiteMarketingWorkshop.com (Website Marketing Workshop) to view articles (postings) related to our discussions.
• Ask questions in the comments portion of the postings

About the new website

• Developed it using WordPress content management system in about 1 week.
• Hosted for about $6 per month.
• Went through 3 different domain names (website names) before I found one I was happy with.
• Using FeedBurner to allow visitors to easily get updates by e-mail or RSS reader.

I hope you find it useful.

Several of you in the Website Marketing class asked for contact information for Melody Harshbarger of Multi Media Connection Studios and Kirkham Systems. The full Kirkham contact information can be found on the Kirkham Systems website.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

If you haven’t already heard, the new version of the FREE FireFox internet browser is set to be released June 17th (Tuesday). If you want to be a part of history and help set a new record, click on the link above or go to the main FireFox website .

About FireFox

FireFox is the most popular browser that does NOT come pre-installed on all Windows computers (over 20% of U.S. internet users use FireFox). It is fast, stable, easy to navigate, easy to customize, and is so much more enjoyable to use. Most everyone who discovers FireFox and tries it ends up using it instead of Internet Explorer.

HINTS for Installing

After you have downloaded FireFox and start the installation process, there are 2 things you want to do. First, consider making FireFox your default browser. Second, allow it to import all your Favorites from Internet Explorer.

Caveat

Get FireFox, but keep Internet Explorer for browsing poorly designed websites. Unfortunately, there are a few websites that were designed without good web standards and they will not display properly. In my experience, about 1 in 300 sites I use will not work as well in FireFox. By the way, the only reason that Internet Explorer 7 had tabbed browsing was because of the growth of FireFox – competition is GOOD.

I look forward to sharing the "Most Downloads In One Day" record with you!

Image via Wikipedia

Just a quick note to let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed our sessions at the Van Buren Chamber of Commerce on Friday June 6. We had two different sessions near capacity for a total of 32 participants.

Several of you requested contact information for Kirkham Systems and Melody Harshbarger of Multi Media Connection Studios. I will list those in the next posting.

I am currently finalizing details for a website that is exclusively website marketing information. I will let you know on this website when the new site is ready. I will include postings that provide additional detail for several of the elements we discussed briefly.

Thank you all for your participation and questions.