My friend Sue has (had) a Char-Broil gas grill for a little over a year when it malfunctioned and could have easily burned down her house. When she called the company instead of trying to defuse and solve a bad situation the company apparently tried to blame her for what clearly seems to me to be a defective product.

How do I know this? Well, Sue has a blog and wrote about it. I had never heard of this problem before so I did a quick generic search (Char-Broil Gas Grill) and found lots of examples of this happening. The first one I found was on the second page of Google, but I believe it’s probably moving up fast and soon may be found right up there with the companies own site on the first page. Imagine that! A potential customer searches for your name and right below your site they see complaints about shoddy products and poor customer service. In my mind that’s no way to build any business.

I have written before about the problem of ignoring or blaming others for your problems and the proper way to handle problems. This situation is yet another lesson in how not to behave. You may say it’s not really the companies problem, but I say that even if it only looks like they’re at fault, in today’s era of social networking and commentary, in the end the company will always lose this fight and maybe big time.

Read We’re Hot Stuff!

My friend from way back in High School, Barb Gerson has a site that she started when she recently went into business for herself called “My Sales Tactics“.

We sometimes write back and forth about some crazy things like the Ohiopyle “Over The Falls Race“, but it’s usually business. She recently asked me to comment on her blog about what, if anything, that I was planning to do to get some free promotion for my business. I think that she wanted ideas on how to get free public relations for the fall season, but I wrote about how I’m increasing my networking activities and using that to promote my business.

I would love to be mentioned in my local newspaper or be interviewed by a radio or TV station, but I really haven’t spent much of my time working on that. I did have a reporter from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette call me about the post I wrote to get Pittsburgh to the top of Google for the Best City In The World, but they didn’t mention my name in the article. It is number 2, by the way, and has been for quite a while now which is quite a success, but I don’t know if it will ever make number 1.

While getting mentioned in the mass media would surely increase my site visitors I don’t know if it would help my business as much as having people that know me tell others about my skills. So I prefer to concentrate on networking.

I have noticed since the middle of July that my business seems to be picking up and hopefully the economy is really turning around, but most businesses are still a bit slow and if you have any great (or even not-so-great) ideas about how someone can promote their business I would appreciate you adding a comment and telling us all about it.

Whenever I’m at a networking or social event where someone asks about my business, there is always someone who wants to know what they can do for their site to be number one on the search results page for whatever it is that they are selling or promoting.

My first answer is usually the same one. “You need quality one-way links from high ranking sites that point to your information.”

I then wait for their surprise and follow up, “You mean there’s no secret formula that you can use on my site to (magically) do it?”

I try to explain, “Of course, you need to have the search engines be able to find and index your pages, but then it’s mostly about having good inbound links.”

Sometimes I get a blank stare, sometimes just disbelief, but usually I get The Magic Question. “Why would a high ranking site want to link to mine?”

I usually answer, “That’s exactly what every site owner needs to ask themself. I also believe the best way to get links is to first have content on your site that’s worth linking to.”

I also try to offer more help and send them to this blog where I have written many times about how to promote your site with the search engines. I also read a post recently by Mike Grehan on the ClickZ site that can help.

Read Why Linking Is so Important for Ranking

Iron City Beer has long been a symbol of the City of Pittsburgh. It’s no secret that they and many other local brewers have struggled mightily to save their brands in recent years.

Several years ago Rolling Rock Beer was purchased by Anheuser Busch. They moved them out of their mountain home (Latrobe PA) and spend a gazillion dollars to promote the brand nationally. Rolling Rock is now for sale so I guess the experiment failed.

Iron City recently moved out of the city and into Rolling Rock’s old brewery. It’s much more modern and Iron City is planning to make and sell much more beer to stay alive. One of the things that they are counting on to sell more beer is social media. If you have ever seen a Pittsburgh Steeler road game you’ve probably seen thousands of towel waving fans. Many of them have moved from The ‘Burgh over the years, but still possess their hometown loyalty. Iron City is counting on that loyalty and social media to spread the word instead of a huge advertising campaign.

So far all that I’ve seen is a “coming soon” website OneCityOneNation.com and a pretty good slogan -”One City. One Nation. One Beer.” This should be an interesting one to watch. Successful social media campaigns are very hard to manufacture, but Pittsburgh fans in far away lands are a different breed as well.

Read The Diaspora Report: Ex-Pittsburghers, Iron City beer wants you

It’s been my experience that the companies that are doing well these days with social media are the ones that let their people speak freely online and that alone can provide them with an organization for their people to brag about. Of course, if they aren’t willing to publicly address complaints it won’t work anyway.

So many companies these days are paralyzed by the fear of someone saying something bad about them on their own site that they won’t allow anything, but “official” communication. Rather than letting their people do the social marketing they try to manufacture viral campaigns.

I find that viral marketing is very hard to manufacture and even harder to maintain. Even if you do manufacture a good campaign unless there is also something that reminds the audience of your name it’s not worth much.

Here’s a good article on MediaPost that offers help with social video.

Read Cadbury: Viral Video Done Right

What is a web design specialist, or Internet Solutions Architect as I like to think of myself?

Well, here in Pittsburgh as is true I’m sure in your town, a web design specialist is more than just someone who will design your website and give it back to you. They are (or should be) a person or a company who will work with you before and after you start work and ask questions to find out who you and your company are and what your goals for a site are. Then follow up to make sure that things are working as expected.

It’s important that you think about this in advance, so that you can convey to your designer a good idea of what you expect. A web designer should not tell you what your site is all about. Of course, it’s good if they make suggestions about style and interaction with your visitors, but remember it’s your name, your site and your visitors.

They should also help you with interactive tools to help keep your visitors engaged. Things like blogs, calendars, forums and more. Your designer should also be able help you connect your site to social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. These tools can help promote your site and business.
NOTE: Unless you’re willing to add content to these sections on a regular basis you may be better off without them rather than let them sit there unchanged for long periods of time.

Finally, your website designer should be able to give you reasons why they want to do things differently than what you want them to do. If they have experiences to back up their opinions you should at least consider what they’re proposing, but in the end it should be you with the final decision and if it’s not you should consider someone else.

I was at a networking lunch yesterday with the Business Leads Exchange Group, it’s a wonderful group that I recommend that you check out if you are near The ‘Burgh.

I’ve been going every month for quite a while now and much of my time is spent catching up with members that I know and finding about what they are doing for their business and how it’s working (or not). I always like to offer my opinions and advice when I can.

One of my friends asked me a question that I have heard before, “which works better organic search listings or paid ones?” I quickly answered that I believe the organic listings are better received.

My friend asked me why and I replied that organic listings are usually free (or less expensive if you are buying SEO services), but even if you leave out the cost factor I believe they are more trusted. Maybe it’s because you can’t (easily) buy them.

When he asked me more questions about it, I found myself quoting from a post I read on the Search Insider blog the other day. Rather than me repeating it again I’ll let you read it for yourself.

A Tale Of Two Houses

Can social networking hurt your business? You bet it can! I have written many times before about how quickly bad publicity can spread these days.

One of the main reasons that I hear from small business owners about why they don’t want to spend the time to get into social networking is that they are worried that someone will say something bad about them.

I have some news for all of those people, no one needs your blog or forum to tell the world about what they think of your business. I recently read a good post by Frank Marafiote called How Social Networking Can Kill a Business. His main point is “Don’t let the mud hang there on the wall with no counter-response. Otherwise, readers will assume it is true.”

My main point about this is how can you respond to something that you don’t even know is there? You need to be involved in social media at least to the point where you know what is being said about you.

Read How Social Networking Can Kill a Business

I recently got in touch with a high school classmate of mine. Barb Girson is an International Direct Selling expert, trainer and coach who recently set sail with her own business called mysalestactics.com. We had a few emails back and forth and an interesting conversation about where we have been and what works in promoting out businesses.

I mentioned to her that Craigslist has been one of the best tools that I use to find new customers. Barb asked me about how I get it to work for me and also asked me an interesting question, “Would you consider this a networking strategy?”

My first thought that no it was not, but after pondering the question for a while I have decided that it is. I’ve met new people through the use of it and have used my networking rule of trying to offer something of value (free information) without expecting anything in return, so I guess it could be called networking.

Her next request was for me to describe the process that I used for this. I decided to write this post about it because I believe what Scott Ginsberg says “Writing is the key to all wealth“.

There are two methods that I use to promote my business on Craigslist:

First, I have written a series of advertisements that I rotate through several cities in my region in the “computer services” section. It is important to follow Craiglist’s rules by not posting too often and only posting these ads in the appropriate section.

I have seen many ads for different services posted in the “web design jobs” or “computer gigs” sections. Since these sections are for people looking to buy web services these ads usually get flagged and removed pretty quickly, but more importantly they are not read by the people who are actually in the market for their services. I know that personally I would never hire someone who didn’t understand or care that this was not the correct section to post their ads.

Second,  the “web design jobs” and “computer gigs” sections are the ones that I need to be reading to find people advertising jobs that I can do. To read those I use RSS. Every Craigslist page has it’s own RSS feed and I can subscribe to those just like any blog and get these ads almost as soon as they appear in my feedreader. For that I use Thunderbird another great free Open Source tool. Not only do I get my email, Thunderbird brings all of my RSS feeds into it as well and I can read them just like my regular email.

Even though there is quite a bit of Spam on Craigslist using Thunderbird I can still monitor many Craigslist cities, have all the post sent to one folder and go through 30 or 40 posts in a couple of minutes. I currently subscribe to two feeds in well over 30 Craigslist cities and still only spend about ten to fifteen minutes a day working on it. I probably actually answer five to six ads a day and I have a general outline that I use for this. I try to personalize each reply to the individual city and request, but here’s the basic outline:

Hello,
My name is Jim Lillicotch and I am replying to your Craigslist ad.
I live in Pittsburgh PA and have customers in (local city) and many other areas that are very satisfied.

For information about my business, I invite you to tour my blog:

• seo
• promotion
• email
• viral
• management
• security
• do it yourself

Feel free to comment on any posts that strike your interest and contact me with any questions

Thank you for your consideration.

Jim Lillicotch
Lillicotch.com

I have found that people posting these jobs on Craigslist tend to be bombarded with responses to their ads, but if I get a reply I try to find out exactly what their job entails and offer to be as helpful as I can. I have foud several customers this way and also a few good friends.

I have been reading quite a bit on social media lately and Twitter in particular. I thought I would try some of the strategies that I have seen to make this site better by bring more visitors to the site. I am always looking for more customers,  inbound links and visitors to comment on my blog posts.

One of the things that I see often is that people on social networking sites like to read about themselves. So people on Twitter like to read articles about Twitter, folks on Digg like articles about Digg, etc. I am going to write more posts on this topic and try some new strategies. My customers ask more often lately about if and how this works, so I will write more posts about what works for me and what doesn’t.

Today I added the Tweet This plugin for WordPress that you now see at the bottom of all my blog posts. It’s an experiment to see if tweeters will retweet some of my posts and possibly pick up some more followers. Please feel free to share here what works for you.