Patricia H Browne

Easter dinner is an odd place to be talking about using the web to market small businesses, but that’s exactly what happened yesterday.  A niece wants to begin a writing career and my sister-in-law’s sister-in-law (yeah…) runs a small custom fine furniture business with her husband.  What started out as two conversations quickly became one.

 I began by talking to my niece about using e-zines and online resources to launch her writing career.  There are many, many sources hungry for her expertise (education) and many outlets to spin articles.  She really got the concept of writing for these sources, and linking back to her own site with a archive of additional ready material.  She can position herself as an expert, get some publishing credits to build on and get some experience.  The key is linking.  She needs a website of her own to link back to and, as she builds her archive of articles, linking within new articles so that interested readers can find out more.  And the more links you have, the higher your ranking.

My sister-in-law’s sister-in-law needs a slightly different approach.  While she can write articles about fine furniture, surface care, refinishing tips, etc, I told her that she should probably concentrate on two other areas: reciprocal links with designers they work with and registering domains that reflect search engine strings.  For example, they are located south of Boston and make custom tables.  I suggested she Google her competitors and then come up with some domains.  Southofbostoncustomtables.com, finecustomfurnitureboston.com.  Domain registrations are so cheap that it makes sense to register a dozen or so likely search terms and then set up redirects to your website. 

While Easter dinner is not the usual venue for talking Internet marketing, I was happy to share some expertise while we were passing the potatoes.