The Human Network

In my last post I shared some of my trials and frustrations in dealing with the internet as a small business owner. Despite all of the complications that the internet has brought along with it, it has also brought the ‘wide world’ a lot closer together. One of the benefits to establishing a presence on the World Wide Web is having the ability to network with individuals outside of our local area. Individuals that we would not have even dreamed of communicating with just a generation ago. 

It has created a human network that allows for the transference of information and emotion. It is a vibrant visual display that impacts the decisions of consumers and allows for consumers to express their views about marketers. Behind the billions of lines of code and the binary characters that they represent are 7 billion humans all connected in real time, the human network. 

With every keystroke we all draw others closer to ourselves, making the ‘wide world’ that much smaller. For a small business owner the world becomes larger. The local vendor now competes with virtual store fronts. The consumer can view your product and presentation in the comfort of their living room before ever meeting with your company representative, and information that we had to wait days for is at the edge of our fingertips. These are just some of the benefits of the new human network.

Navigating the World Wide Web

One of the many things that I have concentrated on this off season is to create and define a web presence for Leaf It To Us. In the ‘golden days’ of the internet that meant throwing up a web page and doing a bunch of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If anybody has seen the 2k decade lately please tell them I want my internet back. 

I don’t seriously want to go back to what the internet was; but I am struggling to keep up with what the internet is becoming. Pages, even entire sites are set up specifically for the plethora of mobile devices that everybody is armed with; the watch that is a phone or the T.V. that is a P.C. or the wifi enabled reader that does more than my computer did just a decade ago and who knows what is behind door number 3!

SEO is now a thing of the past. Local search is in vogue now as is optimizing content and segment specific searches. Does building a page and linking every place that your business appears on line back to it even matter anymore? As of this moment, my incarnation of Leaf It To Us does not even have a dedicated web page. 

We can however, be found on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Blogger, Angie’s List, Pinterest, Houzz, Thumbtack, Landscape Networx, and a few others; I personally can also be found on LinkedIn. With 12-15 different active bulletin boards/social media sites, how does a small business manage them all? To be quite honest a few of the sites that I’ve listed frustrate me to no end. The user interfaces vary widely and some are not very user friendly; some have hidden costs that unless a small business is willing to incur severely reduce the accessibility of the sites. 

The most important factor in any marketing campaign is ROI, Return On Investment. I struggle with how to get the most out of the few dollars that I have for internet marketing. I am also challenged with determining what is providing me the most bang for my buck, even if all I am spending is time creating or modifying content. 

This is all a process. What may work well for one business may provide painful results for another. This process also takes lots of time. No one expects a campaign to provide results overnight. This means that as a small business owner you have to know when it is time to say; “I’ve made a serious effort; but, this isn’t working for me”, taking a loss and moving on to the next thing. 

These are just some of the challenges of a small business owner in regards to navigating the World Wide Web.

Behind Every Great Man...

In my last entry I articulated my experiences surrounding having a supportive ‘life partner’ as the lynchpin of a support network verses having a critical partner. It is crucial to the success of a small businessman to have a strong support network. No matter how talented an individual may be it is difficult to build a business in a vacuum. The ability to ‘come home to’ someone who embraces your vision is treasure that cannot be underestimated. 

While my girlfriend has not embraced or agreed with every decision that I have made she never loses sight of my vision and does everything that she can to support it. This blog and many of the other things that I am doing this winter in preparation for the 2014 landscaping season can be attributed to inspirations from my girlfriend. 

Some of the changes that I am making in regards to Leaf It To Us are geared towards positioning the company for a higher level of market recognition. By increasing brand awareness, I expect to add to the level of overall success by creating an entity that is identifiable outside of the work done in the field. This identifiable presence is the footprint that we leave as a company; on the web, with our clients, and in our community. Other changes are solely related to my relationships with other people.

I referred to my girlfriend as the lynchpin of my support network. The term lynchpin suggests that a person brings (holds) together other people. My pursuit of a mentor is directly related to her insights. In fact, she can take credit for my willingness to expand my network of professional contacts into a much more varied set industries. The most important thing that a supportive ‘life partner’ brings to a relationship with a small businessman is that one person that you can celebrate with or share a tough day.