Torka’s Home for Wayward Girls

Four Tips For Making a Living With a Crafts Business

torka — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:52:24 +0000

The Wall Street Journal (of all places) recently featured an article with four crucial tips for crafters who want to sell their wares online. So, what does the WSJ advise?

Be true to your vision. If you simply try to follow trends, you’re likely to find yourself behind the curve as often as not, either totally out of fashion or facing a ton of competition. It’s tough being an also-ran. You’ll have more luck if you have the courage and vision to stand out from the crowd.
Don’t skip marketing opportunities. Sign up for craft fairs. Tell your friends about your business. If your creations are wearable, wear them yourself. Engage people in conversation about your crafts. Always have your business cards on hand and don’t be afraid to spread them around.
Socialize. Sure, you don’t want to ignore traditional publicity (press releases, an online catalog, printed brochures, etc.), but nowadays you can also get attention for your craft business through social media — blogging, Twitter and bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Mixx or del.icio.us. Blogs and Twitter allow you to maintain personal contact with your loyal customers, and all these resources can help get your name out in front of folks you might not otherwise reach.
Charge what your crafts are worth. This is one of the toughest items for almost any small businessperson, not just crafters. The tendency is to price your products too cheap. You need to take into account overhead, labor and the cost of marketing — and allow yourself a profit margin. People tend to judge the quality of a product or service at least partly on the price. It takes guts, but if you want others to consider your work high quality, you need to price accordingly.

I hope these tips were helpful to you. Now, get out there and get creative!

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Copyright © Diane M. Aull, an online consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. For more information about her services, visit NineYards.com or BootstrapSEO. For resources and tools for home based workers, visit Torka's Home for Wayward Girls.

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Don’t Get So Comfortable

torka — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:34:22 +0000

So, I just got back from the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Houston, TX. What a blast that was!

I picked up so many helpful tips and ideas it’s going to take me awhile to assimilate them all. But I wanted right away to pass one along I found tremendously inspiring and important for us as people working from home, or aspiring to work from home.

This tip came from Wendy Piersall, the owner of SparkPlugging (formerly known as eMomsatHome). She’s a work-at-home mom who started a blog as a hobby a couple of years ago to document her efforts at building a home-based business — and watched as the blog grew and blossomed until it became her business.

Wendy’s tip was to force yourself to step out of your comfort zone.

She said so many of the good things that happened to her happened when she did something she didn’t think she could do. Public speaking, making presentations to large companies, introducing herself to well-known bloggers — all those things and more added up to success for her beyond her imagination.

So, what is it about marketing or promoting your business do you think you “can’t do”? And what will it take for you to step out of that comfort zone and do those things anyway?

Einstein is supposed to have defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.”

As long as you continue to do the same-old, same-old, that’s what you’re going to get. If you want extraordinary results, you need to do something extraordinary.

Step out of your comfort zone. Do something that feels a little bit scary. Ask for what you want — the worst that can happen is they tell you no (in which case, you’re no worse off than you were before). And in the best case, they’ll give you everything you want (with manybe a bit more tossed in for fun).

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Make Money with Social Networking?

torka — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:16:09 +0000

I received a spam email the other day claiming 70% of Americans use social media sites. I’m not going to link to the site they directed me to, because (A) I don’t want to give them any more publicity and (B) the site has a really annoying exit script installed that won’t let you close the window without clicking through several JavaScript alerts.

Frankly, I kinda doubt their stats, considering according to this chart of Internet usage statistics, only about 71% of the people in North America have Internet access to start with. Saying virtually everyone who has Internet access is also an active social media user, well, that just doesn’t match my observations. Certainly I know quite a few people who regularly use the Internet, but who don’t have any use for social networking or social bookmarking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, etc.

I mean, yeah, there are a lot of accounts on social media sites. But you know what? In a lot of cases, it’s the same people signed up for multiple accounts.

For instance, my husband has a personal MySpace page, and as a working musician he also has a professional MySpace page. And the recording studio he owns also has it’s own MySpace page. That’s three “users” of MySpace that all resolve to the same individual. I have personal accounts on MySpace, LinkedIn and FaceBook, and maybe a half dozen or so others, so I’m one individual accounting for “users” on multiple social media sites.

Let’s just say I’d advise taking that “70% of Americans use social media sites” claim with a huuuge grain of salt.

But I digresss. The point is, the spammer was trying to get me to sign up for some “system” that would teach me how to game social media sites to make money.

And the only thing I can say to that is, if you get this same solicitation or anything similar, please don’t. These folks and others like them offer high-pressure sales pitches with all sorts of attractive-sounding promises (like making hundreds of dollars a day without any work), but if you value your business or personal reputation, you wouldn’t touch this sort of thing with a ten-foot pole.

Members of social media sites don’t want to be bombarded by high-pressure sales pitches, endless ads and “once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.” They don’t want worthless “members” who try to manipulate the social networking site solely for the purpose of driving traffic away to the member’s own get-rich-quick website. They do not respond kindly to those who try to exploit their communities for profit without giving anything back.

Join an online community because you want to contribute something of value (and, yes, I’m talking about waaaay more than simply links to your own website content) to the community, and you just may be surprised over time by the value you can gain from the connections you make. The relationships you build can continue to pay dividends in unexpected ways for years to come.

Join an online community with the intention of exploiting the members to make money and you’re throwing away those long term benefits for an unlikely shot at short-term income — which will dry up as you are blacklisted, booted out or ignored by the influential members of each community you try to spam.

This would not be acceptable behavior in real life, and it’s not acceptable online.

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Free Live Chat for Your Website

torka — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:01:15 +0000

Have you considered offering live chat on your website? You may have seen it on other sites — you know, the little button or text box that offers to let you chat in real time through the website with a customer service rep.

I know some business owners who swear by it. Of course, I know others who’ve tried it and swear it didn’t do anything for them.

Cool thing about live chat: it lets your customers ask you questions right away, while the questions are still fresh in their minds. This could help increase your sales by allowing you to deal with their objections almost as if they were standing right in front of you in your store or office.

Not so cool thing about live chat: it can be a bit pricy to implement, and it doesn’t help increase sales for everyone — so you could end up spending a fair chunk of change only to see no tangible results. Bummer, eh?

Well, Google’s come through for us cheapskate webmasters before, with free high-end tools like Google Analytics. (Highly recommended, by the way.) And now they’re doing it again, with the Google Talk chatback badge.

Google Talk is their free instant messaging service, sort of like Windows Messenger, AIM or Yahoo’s chat service. But now Google has implemented a “badge” you can install on your website, which will allow visitors to chat with you via Google Talk in real time — even if they don’t have a Google Talk account!

And it’s free!

Now, in order to make this work, you need to have a Google Talk account, and you need to be signed in to Google Talk in order for the chatback badge to display your status as online and “available.”

So now you can experiment with live chat, see if it makes a difference for your business, without it costing you a dime. Now, how cool is that?

Read here for more information from Google, including a link to get your own chatback badge for your website.

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How Do You Decide What Kind of Business to Start?

torka — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 22:43:44 +0000

I participate in several online discussion forums targeting small business owners. Very often, new members want guidance about what kind of business to start. Of course, the more experienced among us usually advise them to think about their interests, talents and experiences, and build a business based on those.

That’s because building a new business takes time, money and effort, and it’s going to be a lot easier to invest the amounts of each you need to when you’re working on something you really enjoy.

Occasionally, though, someone comes along who doesn’t want to hear that answer. They claim they have no interests. No talents. No skills. Yep, nothing they feel passionate about. They simply want a business that will make them lots of money, preferably quickly and with minimal effort.

Of course, if we knew the answer to making lots of money fast with little to no effort, we’d all be doing it. And we probably wouldn’t be too quick to share the secret with every random stranger who showed up.

One day, such a person showed up at the High Rankings Forum. He wanted us to give him an idea for a website that would make him rich. When we asked what his interests were, he said the only thing he was interested in was in being rich. So here’s an expansion on what I posted in response:

Everybody has interests and skills. Really. The trick is to find them, and believe in them.

So, let’s say you did find a way to make tons of money. What would you do with the money, once you made it? If you had enough money to do or buy anything you wanted, what would you do? Where would you go? What would you buy? That’s a good way to determine your interests.

Oaky, so now you know your real interests, come up with a way to turn that interest into a business. Brainstorm:

What do other people who are interested in those kinds of things do?
What do they need?
If you were in the position to indulge your passion, what sorts of products would you be looking to buy?
What kinds of services would you want to have available?

Those are the kinds of things that you’ll want to incorporate into your business plan. Doesn’t have to be fancy, but you must have a plan. As the old saying goes: if you don’t know where you’re going, how can you tell when you get there?

So what if you come up with more than one interest? Some people become paralyzed in fear of making the “wrong” choice. Maybe it’s easier to claim you don’t have any interests at all than risk making a choice you might come later to regret.

Don’t be afraid of choosing. It’s tough, I know. But until you make choices and start taking action, nothing will happen.

Back when I was young, while waiting for the Earth’s crust to finish cooling, I used to fret about making decisions. I was laboring under the delusion that the choices I made then would inevitably lock me in to a path, and I was afraid of choosing the wrong path.

Turns out, while the choices I made back then definitely influenced the direction of my life, very few of them were irrevocable. The job I do now didn’t even exist when I graduated from college. (Heck, personal computers didn’t exist when I graduated from college. Yes, I am ancient.)

So far, I’ve run through a whole bunch of “careers” in a whole bunch of industries, and I’m not through yet. Maybe one of these days I’ll find something to settle down with. Then again, maybe not. Maybe I’ll just spend the rest of my life reinventing myself every few years.

So, you put in a lot of hard work on something and it turns out you’re not as interested in the topic as you thought you were, or it turns out to be less lucrative than you’d hoped. Well, then, you’ve learned something and you’ve had some practice at starting a business and you’ve honed your marketing skills, so at least the time wasn’t wasted. Maybe the next thing you try will be “the one.”

Or maybe you’ll get lucky and hit a bullseye on the first try.

Or maybe you’ll have to try several more times. Could even be nothing will ever be the one end-all-be-all “business of your dreams,” and you’ll spend your whole life starting businesses, building them up and then selling them and starting all over.

Maybe it turns out you have tons of interests. Well, there’s nothing stopping you from pursuing all of them, you know!

Just don’t try to start them all at once, or you’ll lose focus.

Pick one to start, and once you’ve got it ticking along, pick another. Then another. And another. Even if none of them individually make you a ton of money, in the aggregate they could be quite lucrative. And since you’re interested in them all, it will never be a chore to work on any of them.

However it turns out to be — acknowledge and move on. As long as you’re moving, you’re still in the game. You don’t lose until you give up.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t come with a money-back guarantee. You just have to take your best shot with whatever you’ve got. Don’t sell yourself short — we almost all have more going for us than what we think we do.

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Pay per Post: Good Idea or Risky Choice?

torka — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:55:13 +0000

Are you currently marketing your business through blogs using “pay per post” (PPP)? Have you thought about it? If so, here are a few things you might want to take into consideration.

What is PPP?

For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, “pay per post” is where bloggers agree, for a fee, to write blog posts about a company’s product or service. These posts are mixed in with other non-paid posts on a personal blog and basically masquerade as “normal” blog posts.

So why would advertisers buy posts on an individual’s blog to start with? There are basically two reasons:

The blog has statistics to indicate it has a good number of subscribers or traffic. The advertisers believe the blog posts will drive customers to their site.
The blog has a strong displayed PageRank in the Google Toolbar and a strong backlink profile. The advertisers think they’ll get a search engine ranking boost from the links the blogger puts in the post pointing to their website.

Concerns about PPP

Some people have concerns about this from an ethical standpoint. The expectation many people have is that a blog will represent the real opinions of the person writing the post. When they read a positive post about a product or service, they assume the blogger is honestly recommending it based on their own experiences or observations, not that it’s a paid advertisement.

The problem these people have is that generally the disclosure of the paid post is not very obvious. Some blogs I’ve seen simply have a single page that says, in essence, “some posts on this blog have been paid for, but I’m not going to tell you specifically which ones.”

For these folks, this equates to, say, a newspaper allowing companies to buy space on its editorial pages without disclosing which posts are actual editorial opinions and which are paid ads.

A second concern is how effective PPP is. Do the advertisers get a good return for their money? Well, there are a few potential concerns:

Does the blog get any real traffic? Some of the PPP blogs I’ve seen are mostly paid posts, with only a few “real” posts scattered here and there. Maybe they started out as interesting personal blogs, but they’re now more like a newspaper advertising insert. Traffic stats can be manipulated. What kind of real human visitors does a blog such as that likely attract?
How many of the blog visitors read these paid posts? Bottom line, it doesn’t matter how much traffic the blog gets, if everybody simply skips over the paid post, it has little potential to send traffic to the advertiser’s site.
Does the blog actually pass link popularity? Google and the other search engines have the ability to blog individual pages and entire domains from passing link popularity (or in Google, PageRank). They don’t publish a list of blocked pages or domains anywhere. So if you’re buying a post for supposed increased link popularity, how do you know you’re getting what you paid for?

The future of PPP?

Some people I talk with swear PPP has worked for them. And, you know, it’s quite possible it does, at least in the short term. For some businesses, at least, it might be worth a test.

But there are reasons to be cautious. Google, in particular, is on the rampage lately against paid links, and according to a recent post at TechCrunch, it seems Google now has PPP bloggers it its sights.

Nobody really knows the effect of these PageRank reductions. Could be they’re just a “cosmetic” adjustment to the displayed PageRank on the Google Toolbar — sort of a shot across the bow, putting PPP bloggers (and their advertisers) that Google ain’t happy. (And, like mama, if Google ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.)

Or they could indicate a real adjustment in these blogs’ ability to rank well and pass link popularity — in which case, as an advertiser, I’d have to be at least a little worried about the blogs’ ability to deliver value for my advertising dollars.

My opinion? Well, personally, I’m not comfortable with PPP, so I probably won’t be using it as an advertising vehicle myself, and I’m certainly not going to sign up any of my blogs as publishers.

But if you think it has potential to help your business, I can’t honestly tell you it won’t work (depending on what you mean by “work”). But if it were my business, I’d be pretty cautious, at least until we have more information about the real effects of the latest Google smack-down on PPP blogs.

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Are Your Business Obstacles Boards or Brick Walls?

torka — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:02:27 +0000

I attended a motivational seminar yesterday. It was a huge all-day affair at the local sports arena. Somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 people attended. It was one of those deals where they promise you’re going to be “inspired” and perhaps have your life changed forever.

Now, my problem when it comes to these sorts of things is I’m a pretty tough sell. It’s got to be pretty extraordinary stuff to impress me.

Judging from the number of real-estate name badges I saw and some of the conversations I overheard walking around the arena at lunch, I’m guessing that I, a non-salesperson, was in the minority there. And you know, it’s been my experience that some of the easiest people to sell things to are salespeople themselves. My husband loves to tell stories about his dad — a skilled lifelong salesman — practically handing over his wallet to car salesmen. (My father in law’s idea of “dickering” was apparently to ask if the price on the sticker was the best they could do, and when they said “yes,” to simply pay it.)

Which is weird, because you might think a salesperson, being in sales themselves, would be on to all the tricks. I know as a copywriter, I certainly do key in pretty quickly when somebody’s pulling out all the stops with hard-sell copy techniques, for instance. (And the techniques seldom work on me — I’ve studied the “inner workings” too closely, I guess.)

Likewise, this seminar didn’t — for the most part — move me, or even particularly hold my attention. I couldn’t tell you the names of half the speakers.

But the folks I saw at the seminar yesterday seemed thrilled and inspired and I saw an awful lot of them rushing down to sign up for the services some of the speakers there were hawking.

So I started wondering if maybe there was some value in all this stuff after all. As I sat last night, after I got my son in bed, reviewing and thinking over what I’d heard during the day, I came to the conclusion, no, I was right. Most of what went on was dreck.

But I did come away with at least one insight, so I suppose the day wasn’t a waste.

One of the speakers talked about breaking through your barriers, and used breaking a board with your bare hand as an analogy. Many of us think we can’t break a board with just our hand, and so we can’t. But if you believe you can, with just a few minutes of coaching on the right technique, you can.

As it happens, my husband studies martial arts, so I know this is true. Breaking a board isn’t all that hard. But it’s still pretty scary, and it is a very true fact that if you don’t believe you can do it, and nobody’s taught you the “secret trick” your chances are much lower.

Another of the speakers told the story of an ancestor of his, an immigrant to the USA, who had a hard time finding a job when he arrived. The speaker told how his grandpa did an end run around this barrier by offering his services for a few weeks for free to a man he wanted to work for. His work was of such high quality, the man agreed at the end of that time to hire him.

Now, I thought the first illustration was an excellent example of how to break through a barrier. And I thought the second was a wonderful story of how to go around a barrier. And several of the speakers made the point that the one thing to do when confronted by a barrier is to not simply give up.

And I do agree with that.

But how do you know when a barrier is something to break through (like a board)? And how do you know when a barrier is something to tunnel under, climb over or find a way around (like a brick wall)? Guess wrong and you either hurt yourself trying to break a brick wall with your bare hands, or you waste a lot of time digging a tunnel under a small piece of wood.

I pondered this for awhile.

And then I remembered another piece of advice I’d heard a lot recently (but, for some reason, not at this particular seminar). The advice was on the importance of having one or more “mentors.” And how important mentors are, not only to people looking to build a corporate career (which is where you usually hear the term used) but also for entrepreneurs looking to build a business.

I remember reading if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, one of the things to do is to associate with already-successful entrepreneurs. Network with them, observe them, emulate them, ask them questions, learn from them. Seems to me, if you have a mentor or two, they can help you learn how to distinguish those brick walls from the boards, and devise a good strategy for dealing with each one.

I can agree with that, too.

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Are You Marketing Your Small Business Online?

torka — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 05:19:01 +0000

According to an article on WebProNews.com, a study by Greg Sterling at Opus Research shows that 59% of small businesses don’t do online marketing.

The study shows that business owners rank the web about as important as newspaper advertising, but for some reason this doesn’t translate into spending for online ads.

The article reports Sterling as having written, “As a practical matter, Web sites without some other marketing element (e.g., SEM/SEO) aren’t particularly effective in reaching audiences.”

What I find particularly interesting (and a bit puzzling) is the reluctance to spend time, energy or money for online marketing. I mean, it’s easier to measure the return on investment for online campaigns than for almost any other form of advertising or marketing.

You can pump hundreds (even thousands) of dollars on newspaper advertising without ever knowing for sure that it’s generated even one additional sale for you. On the other hand, with the free Google Analytics, you can track directly from an pay-per-click ad to a website sale.

Search engine optimization, properly done, can pay dividends for years in terms of company visibility, branding and direct sales. Optimize your site well and it can continue to show in the search results for a long time to come. On the other hand, as soon as you stop paying for traditional “old media” ads, it can be a case of “out of sight, out of mind” for your customers.

I dunno. It just doesn’t make sense to me to put all that money and effort into creating a great website in the first place, and to then do nothing to promote or market it.

So, what do you do to put your website in front of your potential customers? How much have you budgeted for online advertising and/or search engine optimization? How does that compare to how much you spend on other forms of advertising?

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No More Lowballers!

torka — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 18:21:41 +0000

Recently on the Small Business Ideas forum, a discussion came up about pricing for a new business. I know this is a tough topic, and I’m hoping some of what we talked about will be helpful to those of you facing the same issue.

A new member of the forum was contemplating starting a company to do home cleaning. This member had experience in the business working for other large companies, but this would be their first foray into being in business solo.

The temptation, of course, was to price the new company’s services much lower than what the big companies in the area were charging. Several forum members (including me) thought this was a bad idea.

As forum member Ken said, the kind of customers you attract with a bargain-basement price are the ones who only shop price. He called them “lowballers.” As he pointed out, they’re the kind of customer who will leave you high and dry as soon as they find somebody else willing to work cheaper.

And there’s only so far you can go to cut your price in response. At some point, you can’t charge any less and still make a living. Besides, do you really want to find yourself working 12 to 15 hour days for minimum wage (or worse)?

I didn’t think so!

I mean, isn’t part of the point of starting your own business to be able to make a living at it?

But I hear ya. You need to offer something to compete against the “big boys.” After all, they’ve got better name recognition, a bigger advertising budget, more resources. How can you compete without offering a lower price?

Do them one better

Figure out what you can do better than the big guys. For intance, you can offer the personal attention of the company owner — there are customers who will appreciate being able to deal directly with the “big boss” instead of a low-level employee of a faceless corporation.

There are customers who will pay extra for this kind of personal, high-level service. These are the kinds of customers you want, not the lowballers.

So sell the benefits of what you have to offer.

Go the extra mile

Offer extra services that the big guys don’t. For instance, in the case of the house cleaning service, they could also offer vacation house-sitting, where they stop by your house every day, turn on and off some lights, water your plants, bring in the mail and newspaper and generally give your house that “lived-in” look.

If you don’t want to do this kind of service yourself, maybe you could partner with another service provider who provides the kind of service you’d like to add-on. For instance, the house cleaner could partner with a pet-sitter to have them take care of the daily visits for on-vacation customers. The house cleaner bills the customers and pays the pet-sitter as a subcontractor.

The pet-sitter gets the benefit of additional customers without having to spend time recruiting them. The customers will appreciate being able to deal with a company they already know and trust. The house cleaner makes additional profit without having to do any extra work. A real win-win-win situation!

So put your thinking cap on. For the house cleaner, some other ideas I had: exterior power washing, landscaping, auto detailing, carpet & upholstery cleaning, even dry cleaning pick up and delivery. What other services could you offer? Who could you partner with?

Make your customers earn a discount

Offer a discount rate to any customer who refers someone else. For example, the house cleaner could offer a one-time discount or a free house cleaning to existing cutomers for every referral as long as the person they referred signed a contract for some minimum amount of time (say, six months).

This is a variation on the Internet idea of affiliate marketing. They send you a customer and they earn a reward. It’s a way of rewarding your most enthusiastic customers.

Another idea is to discount your rates the longer the contract term, or offering “loyalty cards” where you mark off every time they make a purchase from you, to eventually earn discounted or free services. This way you reward your most loyal customers.

These are the kind of “discounts” that can end up making you more money — and that’s the best kind of discount!

Put time on your side

If you still want to offer a lower price to attract your first customers, offer it as a limited-time “introductory special.” For the house cleaner, this could be simply giving a discount rate on the first cleaning, with normal rates to apply thereafter, or perhaps offering a discount to the first however many customers who sign up.

This way you don’t have to give everybody the discount, and you avoid the problem of your prices being permanently set too low. It can also be an incentive for new customers to sign up early, giving your business a jump start.

The point is, the one thing you don’t want to do is set customer expectations low with bargain-basement prices, or you may never be able to climb out of the cellar. Justify the price with exceptional service, reward customer loyalty or offer a short-term “sale” to get a new business off the ground — but make sure your “regular” rates are near the market rate, lest you start your new business off behind the eight-ball.

You want loyal, enthusiastic customers who appreciate the value of what you offer. Lowballers are only looking for the cheapest price. The last thing you should to is cater to the lowballers. No more lowballers!

For more help with pricing, check out the free Make Your Price Sell downloadable course.

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Make the Most of Google Local

torka — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 03:53:19 +0000

Have you noticed changes in the search results as displayed in Google lately? Like videos and images and local search results all mixed in with the “regular” listings. It’s called “Universal Search,” and it’s the wave of the future with Google and the other search engines. Ask.com is doing something similar and calling it 3D search.

It’s not in place everywhere. For instance, a search for pizza restaurant raleigh doesn’t show anything but the standard “ten blue links.” But a search for pizza restauarant charlotte brings up a big block of local search results, right up there at the top of the page.

So, how can you maximize the chances your local business will show up in those prime top-of-page listings?

Stake Your Claim

The first thing to do is, of course, to get into Google Local to start with. Google pulls listings from a number of sources, including SuperPages, yellow page directory sites and their own discovery. If you’re a local-oriented business, make sure your website mentions your address (including ZIP code and local telephone number with area code). I’ve found it helpful for a number of reasons to include the address information in the page footer for local sites I’ve worked with.

It’s likely Google may have already included your business. To find out if they have, first log in to your Google Account. Then go to Google Maps and click the Find Businesses link near the top of the page. Enter your business name in the What box and your location in the Where box, and see if you’re listed.

If you’re listed, click on the more info link beside your business name in the column on the right to display your business location on the map at the left. In that box you’ll see a link to add or edit your business.

If you’re not listed, click the more info link beside any of the business names in the column on the right so as to display the add or edit your business link.

This will bring up a page where you can choose:

Edit your business information
Suspend your listing
This isn’t my listing

If the listing is for your business, choose Edit your business information. If the listing is for another business, choose This isn’t my listing, which will allow you to enter your business information as a new listing.

Note that any of these options will require you to validate yourself as someone who’s associated with that business in order for the changes to be activated. More on that in a bit.

Make the Most of Your Opportunity

Okay, so now you’re in listing edit mode. What can you do here to get the most bang out of your listing?

Pay attention to your business name/title. You don’t have to use your “official” business name, especially if you can use a common name that contains a good key phrase. For instance, in my hometown, there’s a drive-through burger joint whose official name is “Edna’s #3.” They could enter their business name as “Edna’s Carry Out Burgers” or “Edna’s Drive In.” Use a name that your prospective customers are likely to use when trying to find you.
When it domes to your address, accuracy counts! Spell out words like “boulevard,” “drive” and “street.” Spell out directional words instead of using indicators such as S, N, E or W. Check the location marker to make sure it’s accurately placed. If it’s not, use the Fix incorrect marker location to put it where it belongs.
Hey, this is the web, after all! Google gives you a space to enter your business web address. Use it!
Call me! List all the applicable phone numbers. If you have a local number and a toll free number, list them both. If you have multiple local numbers for various purposes (such as a restaurant with one line for reservations and another for take-out orders), list them all. Make it easy for customers to get in touch.
Choose your categories wisely. Check out the available categories and choose those that best fit your business — and, more importantly, correspond to the way your prospective customers are likely to categorize your business. Depending on what kind of business you have, you may need to experiment a bit with these to find the best performing categories for you.
A picture could be worth 1,000 words. Google allows you to enter up to ten photos, so take advantage of the opportunity. They don’t allow generic logos, but you can enter photos of your products or your storefront. Enter a picture of of your building or storefront to help people find you. If you’re a restaurant, you could submit photos of your signature dishes. If you sell merchandise, upload pictures of your most popular items. Use your imagination!
Make use of the other fields, tool. If applicable, list your hours of business and payment methods, for instance. Google also allows you to enter custom fields, which you can use for such things as how long you’ve been in business, menu specialties and anything else you think would be useful for your prospective customers.

Validate

Once you’ve finished updating your listing, you’ll be given some options of how to validate yourself. You need to demonstrate to Google that you are associated with that business so they can make sure you’re not some random person off the street, or a competitor trying to mess up your listing.

Your options are:

Validate by phone: This is the quickest, as Google will simply generate an automated call to your business. However, if your business is like some and instead of a human operator your outgoing greeting is an automated voice routing message (“Press one to speak to sales, press two to speak to customer service…”), this option won’t work for you. There’s no way for Google’s automated system to press the right button or enter your extension number, and no way for you to know the system is calling calling until it does.
Validate by postcard: This option takes longer (about two to three weeks), but if you can’t validate by phone, this may be your best option. Google will send you a letter with a PIN that you can use to validate your account. By entering the PIN, you demonstrate to them you work at the business address to which they sent the letter.
Validate by SMX: If you have a business cell phone number associated with your listing, you may also be able to get your PIN via text message.

Once you get your PIN and validate your authorization to make the changes, your listing will be updated. Easy-peasy!

Encourage Reviews

An important aspect of how well your local listing ranks is the presence of customer reviews. So, encourage your happy customers to leave reviews.

So how best to do that?

Well, a good start would be to simply ask for them. For some reason, people often seem to be afraid to just ask — and it can be surprisingly effective.

You can also offer your customers incentives for leaving reviews: discounts, coupons, free stuff. It’s up to you. There’s nothing wrong or unethical about rewarding those who take the time to help you out.

It’s really not that hard, and the rewards can be great. So, go out there and get local!

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