I spent the day yesterday at the 27th Fallbrook Avocado Festival where nearly 70,000 visitors join over fifty vendors while The Friendly Village closes down its Main Avenue for these annual festivities.The weather is always perfect, the music is always loud, the crowd usually annoyed and the food vendors are a plenty. I met many creative people - artists, artisans and just plain clever folk and if something tickled my fancy, I'd pop into their booth escaping the warm sun and ask "Do you have a store? a website? Where can I purchase your fabulous goods after today?" To which most responded, "No... but we're on Facebook."
After hearing this enough times, I realized that people who own businesses vying to sell their craft to a multitude of potential buyers who've only brought X amount of dollars along for their activities that day - most of which involve consuming some form of Avocado - aren't properly capturing their prospects. Sure, the Avo Fest makes for a great day of spending and overindulgence, but darling, vintage salt and pepper shakers I purchased would go fabulously with that cake plate I didn't quite bring enough cash to grab yesterday. Do I really have to wait til next year to buy it?
Do I believe having your business on Social Media is important? Uh hello... that's the bread and butter of our staff's work at Lady Luck Consulting but let's pause for a moment and consider WHY your business would benefit from a website.
Remember MySpace? MyWhat? Yeah, that place. The place I used to have over 3,000 "friends" and spend my time blogging about the animals in my care at the now defunct dog rescue and dissolved corporation. The place I used to raise thousands of dollars just by saying "please and thank you." We had a website for which the primary use was featuring our adoptable dogs. That's defunct now too.
My point is that Social Media is every changing. I didn't bother to ask these ambitious vendors of these creative, small businesses if they were on Pinterest, InstaGram or LinkedIn but I saw more 'like us on Facebook' posters yesterday - hand-written, computer generated - than I could count. Yet no check-in QR codes, no mention of their URL, no mention of their Facebook name nor address on their business cards so you could follow through on that promise once you sobered up *ahem*, I mean got back home.
I didn't pitch anybody but business cards were exchanged with promises to look me up and I would do the same. You can find me on Facebook but I also have a website.
Websites are not obsolete. Websites can be anything from your online brochure that includes your mission statement to providing e-commerce (so I could've come home and bought that daggone cake plate!) for increased sales. Websites still should remain the hub of your business. Websites should link up to your Social Media accounts (where the heck will people find you if/when/once Facebook goes where MySpace went...?)
Your website should be where your business shines.
BLOG POST AUTHORED BY: Julie Miller-Hernandez, President of Lady Luck Consulting
To continue to receive updates, please subscribe to our blog.
#profits, #seo, #marketing, #smallbusiness
