This post on Tombuntu, regarding the sites server move included a link to Linode.com.  They are a hosting provider, offered virtual servers running on Xen.  On top of being a very reasonably priced, they have a done a very good job marketing themselves to their target users.  Unlike most hosting providers, their home page isn’t flashy web 2.0ish or chock full of ads for their various services.  The pricing structure on the home page is the price per month, not the price you will pay per month if you sign a 5-year contract.  It is a very clean, simple, and refreshing site. Read more…

1. Connect your employees with your customers.
   • The best thing about being a customer of a small business is getting to know the employees.  You can use a blog to accomplish this.  Let them write posts about their work day, give advice related to your business, or show off a recent success.  You can let them write as much as they want and moderate and post the best content.
   • You may be lucky and have employees that are excited to write  If you don’t though you can still get great content.  Pay your employees or reward them with gift cards for every post that is published.  Remember you control the publishing so they don’t just post stuff to just earn the incentive.
2. Let it go out as a newsletter
   • Many of your customers probably aren’t web savvy.  RSS and blogs are probably not something they are familiar with.  It’s trivial to setup a system that emails your latest posts to a list of permissive users.  Let them sign upand send it out at a pace they are comfortable with.
3. Don’t advertise
   • The worst thing you can do is turn your blog into a advertising mechanism.  If it’s well done it should be an advertisement in itself without being an advertisement.  Don’t promote your specials, “exciting new products”, or write other forms of sensationalism.  Your blog should be an attempt to leave the old ways of marketing behind.  So what should you write about.  Consider these options: how you choose a new product that fills your customers needs, the solution to a common problem your customers have, useful news from your industry, profiles of your employees or even your customers.
4. Don’t force it on anyone
   • This is a form of permissive marketing, it is not to be sold like a used car.  Put up a sign somewhere in your store that your customers can see, don’t have your sales people promote it.  The best marketing is spread by your customers.
5. Don’t feel forced into the standard blog format
   • You don’t need to write daily.  You don’t need to allow comments,  In fact, I would hesitate to allow them as an irate customers is more likely to comment then a content customer.  If you do allow comments, only allow customers to comment; having a sign up code on your receipts or invoices is a perfect way to accomplish this.
6. Do not let your marketing department or public relations department write your blog.
   • Most marketers will kill any chance it has of being fun.  Gimmicks, marketing slang, and PR spin is death to the personality your blog should develop.  Ask an employee to edit posts, but let your writers be themselves.  Marketing and PR will not let your employees passion for their jobs get through
7. Don’t let someone like me design your blog.
   • Hire a real designer and make sure your site looks professional.  If you can’t afford a designer find a template that is clean and can be customized to let your companies image take center stage.

Does anyone know where this sign originated?   Was it mandated by some health department somewhere or did some restaurant decide that it would be good marketing to put the sign up?

I hate this sign, always have and always will.  As an employee it was insulting, as a customer it worries me.  If your employees can’t remember to wash their hands after using the restroom, what else are they forgetting to do?

If I was the marketing director of a large food service chain, one of the first things I would do would be to eliminate the use of this sign from all restrooms.  I would then “accidentally” leak a memo which would state, “We feel our team members are smart enough and have sufficient training to feel comfortable removing this sign from our restrooms.”  I would also consider sending thank you notes to the employees mothers thanking them for defraying the cost of training their sons and daughters.

thank you to sandrino for the photo.

I’ve never been a fan of Best Buy.  Yes, I consider Minnesota my second home after Montana, but just because a company is native to MN doesn’t mean I don’t consider it somewhat evil.  I do have to admit though, that Best Buy usually seems to know what they are doing.  If nothing else choosing to sell Ubuntu score them a point or two less on the evil scale.

Still, even considering them evil, I hate seeing local companies do something incredibly dumb.  Best Buy is opening a store in the Mall of America this week.  Considering that the Mall is less than four miles from Best Buy’s corporate headquarters, it surprised me they didn’t already have a location there.  They seem pretty excited about it, more marketing for a new store than you usually see from Best Buy.  They open on Thursday(8/7), and are giving away some prizes to the first few guests.  On Friday they are having a ribbon cutting ceremony.  Seems like a good idea, it’s going to be pretty crazy I’m sure.  Oddly though, as a celebrity, they brought in Magic Johnson.

Now I would be pretty stoked myself if I got to meet Magic Johnson.  Then again I grew up in Montana where basketball is pretty much the sport of choice for most school.  In Minnesota, at least in my experience, the choice of sports is hockey, football, baseball,  and basketball, in that order.  I can say that nearly all my friends love hockey, spend the NFL season following the Vikes, and at least casually follow the Twins.  Not one of them cares one bit about the Timberwolves.

So why would Best Buy bring in an out of town star who played the states least popular sport?  It seems kind of pointless if you are trying to get people around the Metro excited about the store.  Bring in Gordie Howe or Harmon Killebrew if you are trying get people excited.

Of course maybe they are not trying to get people excited, I’m sure they will be packed all weekend.  It is the Mall of America, where you get trampled just walking of the restroom on weekends.  If that is the case though, then why bother with a celebrity at all?

InternetNews Realtime IT News - eBay Q2 Profits Up 22 Percent.

Not really that shocking when you think about it.  It is similiar to the reason baseball game attendence going up during tough economic times.  You can stretch your dollar further on Ebay which is what nearly everyone is doing these dayys.

Seth Godin wrote a post entitled should small business wine. I personally say heck no.

Growing up in small town America where the nearest McDonalds was almost 70 miles away, nearly all the businesses that I frequented and worked at were small businesses.  Nearly every one of these businesses complained constantly that they couldn’t compete with the big hardware stores, the chain grocery stores, or whatever store their competition was at the time.

Additionally there were those select people who complained that everyone would go shopping at Wal-mart and didn’t spend money locally.  As a high school student I thought this was true and that people who went down the road to spend money were kind of traitors to the community.  Then I went to college and took an economics class.

It amazes me now when I look back, how these small local businesses felt entitled the the local person’s dollar.  They had high prices, were open for business when it was convenient for them, had a poor selection, and their service was by no means outstanding.  In fact other than the fact they were close by, not one of these businesses were deserving of the local dollar.

Now this is not to say that all small local business were poorly run, in fact some of them did quite well, and were frequented by almost everyone.  They competed at some other level other than price, usually it was convience, selection, or service.   But to this day I still remember coming back from college, and discussing this with some local people.  They would look at me like I was crazy for telling them they should be trying to compete with Wal-Mart.  They were defeated before they opened their doors, yet they had by far one of the biggest advantages of any business.  They didn’t have to pay a dime for market research, they just walked down the local diner and could find out what nearly everyone in town wanted.

The hardware store should have been open 24 hours a day during the spring and fall planting and harvest seasons, the restauraunt or bar should have delveried meals to the workers in the field, and the grocery store just needed to stick with the basic necessities, and take special orders on occasion.  Simple, a little inconvenient for the business owner, but if you can’t compete on price do something else better.

No really, look at that sign, what do you think when you see that sign.  I’m guessing you don’t think about the most delicious taco you have ever had.  In fact you may think greasy, mildly flavorful, decent food.  But for some reason we continue to spend our money at this place.  The thing that amazes me is that they haven’t really updated their look in forever.  The menu really doesn’t change.  Compared to their chief competitor, Taco Bell, they really don’t spend anything on advertising.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find the stats to back this up, but considering the number of television ads you see for Taco Bell compared to Taco Johns it seems that this would be the case.

Yet I know if I ask my friends which of the two fast food taco places  they prefer almost everyone of them will say Taco Johns.  I guess it’s proof that if you do the same thing and do it well you don’t need to market yourself nearly as much.

Hot on the heels of removing readburner from my feedlist, which by the way I will probably be adding back in a few days, I have just decided to remove Lifehacker from my list.   One too many completely worthless posts and a week of one year ago posts did me in.  The whole Gizmodo at CES debacle definitely swayed my decision to, not such a fan of Gawker right now.  I really wish Gina would start her own blog, she is much better than what has been going up at Lifehacker lately.

This is a great article about a bank in Fargo, ND which gave their employs $500-$1000 each to use for the cause of their choice.  Though I can definitely see some hurdles to overcome, it’s a creative way for a company to give back.  I will say that I have become pretty immune to companies giving me a huge number and saying we donated that to charity.  This not only gave the employees a reason to feel good about themselves over the holidays, but also generated amazing publicity and all it cost the company was a donation they would have probably given anyway.