Since our book Small Town Rules was released by Que Publishing this year, Barry Moltz and I have been sharing lots of videos, interviews, and guest posts all over the web. So I’m offering this series to share some of these ideas here. Even if you aren’t interested in the book itself, you can learn…
Buying wine is a pretty complex decision for some of our liquor store customers. These are the people who are new to wine, or only drink occasionally. So we want to cut off the awkward part of buying wine. We do that by offering information in a variety of ways. It’s a specialized form of…
As we walked through downtown Belton, Texas, we stumbled on this live window display. The little girl and boy were clearly enjoying being part of the window display, and they certainly caught our eye. We didn’t step in to buy anything, but stopping people in their tracks is a first step. It gives you a…
Choosing a website name or URL for a small business is important, and most of the advice out there is written for big city businesses. For small towns, there are two basic tactics. If you have lots of local competitionBig city businesses often compete over domain names that include the city and the product, like…
I love talking to my friend Paul Chaney because he really gets both small business and small towns. He wrote a great book on the basics of social media for small business called The Digital Handshake. When I heard he had a new book coming out, this one on F-commerce, I invited him to tell…
Every business, no matter how small your town is, has to compete with someone. What advantage will you play up to your customers? Red’s, a barbecue place in my hometown, is promoting its location. See, 14 miles away in another tiny town is a terrific barbecue place. So Red’s is basically saying, “don’t make the…
In a small town, you might think everyone already knows about your business or your well-known tourism attraction. You might think you don’t need a website at all, or that it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website. You’d be wrong. You have new residents, people who have never needed your service before,…
Blogs and social media can be effective marketing tools for small town businesses, but they take planning to make the most of. This is true for small businesses and for tourism groups. Don’t let important events, holidays, and tie-ins sneak up on you. Use your calendar to connect your social efforts to the real world….
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