Recently we worked with Key Theory to help Carolle Wells Vargas, Owner and Executive Etiquette Director of Your Etiquette Style, launch the internet presence of her business.

With more than 20 years in the customer service and training industry, Carolle has worked both domestically and internationally with colleagues and clients to promote successful and profitable relationships.

Key Theory provided a crisp, clean website, with a very professional appeal, and Jax SEO Works assisted with some website development work and search engine optimization.

The Your Etiquette Style offers:

• business etiquette and international protocol training and seminars
• even training on more interesting and effective business dining

Carolle and Your Etiquette Style give an opportunity to get ahead of your competition, helping companies and individuals to polish up, keep up, and move up!

Part of getting your small business going involves setting your pricing, after evaluating how your estimated prices compare with your competitor’s pricing.

Whether you will be charging by the product, project or service, or by the hour, sometimes, it may be tempting to discount your prices, dropping your prices just slightly below what your competition is charging, to try to make some sales.  This sounds like a good way to get some work for your new business.  Of course, you would plan to bring your prices back in line with what others in your profession are charging, as soon as you feel you can keep bringing in customers.

The problem is, if you reduce your pricing below what it costs you to do a project, it means you will have to do more work to make the same amount of money that you needed to make for each job.

As an example:

2 hours at $50 / hour = $100

but 2 hours at $40 / hour only = $80, so you have to do MORE WORK to make the $100 to pay your bills.

Taking a loss to get work will just make you work harder.

For more examples to help you plan your pricing, please see Michelle Chance-Sangthong‘s article, “Discounting Yourself Out Of Business”.

Part of growing your business is growing the network of people you know and work with.

You can socially network with others in your trade or profession as well as networking with clients and potential customers.  Sometimes one sort of relationship (social) leads to another (business), but don’t push your business/sales – focus on building relationships. The important thing at social meetings is to be yourself; friendly, helpful, and fun.  Don’t try to create an image to impress others; let your own qualities shine.

Find organizations in your local area that you are interested in.

Visit their meetings.  Get involved with the groups you enjoy.  (If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, it will just stress you and your unhappiness will be obvious to others.)

For example, we enjoy going to Jacksonville Search Engine Optimization Meetups.  Our group meets on a monthly basis; a gathering of web designers, website search engine optimizers, graphic designers, and others just interested in finding out more about websites and how to optimize their search engine results, such as business owners and members of groups and non-profits.  We enjoy the positive, sharing atmosphere of the meetings, hosted by Michelle Chance-Sangthong.

Try this out yourself.

Think about some groups that you’d like to find out more about. Go visit them and get to know them. Start building your network!

A great way to make more social connections and get more customers is to get involved and volunteer to help or sponsor an event in your business community.

Volunteer to sponsor and / or help in a charity event, an environmental clean-up of a community area , or a beautification project, or sponsor a local amateur sports team.   Advertise the event on your business website, donate some of your product, and or some of your services for use as prizes; doing good things like this and giving back to your business community helps with more good publicity about your business.  Whether its your business name and number on the back of young athletes’ t-shirts or links back to your website from your listing on the charity website, the goodness that you’ll give to others, you’ll get it back, and more.

For example, the Shannon Miller Lifestyle Women’s 5K and Children’s Fun Run.  The Women’s 5k, the Children’s Fun Run, the SML Health Fair with FREE screenings and vendor booths – something to benefit the whole family, and it’s all for raising money for the Shannon Miller Foundation, to fight childhood obesity.  You can become a Sponsor for the event, or volunteer to help and share your skills and talent; it’s a WIN – WIN situation.

Think about it for a minute. What can your business do to help your local community, and let more people in your community know about your business?

When you go shopping, whether it’s for a gift, or something for your home, or anything, do you stop to see if you are buying American?

With unemployment still a concern for many, and a terrible reality for others, it’s up to us, the American consumers, to do our part to help keep citizens of our United States of America employed.

Earlier generations helped our country by buying American.  It’s a patriotic thing to do.

You may have to search a little harder, drive a little further, place a mail order, or pay a little more for a quality, American made item or service, but you are helping your neighbors and your country.

As professional Jacksonville copywriter, Cindy Cyr, said about ABC’s List of American Gifts , “If each person spent just $64 a year more on Made in America products, we would add 200,000 jobs here.”   That sounds good to me.

Please do your part for your friends and neighbors, for your country, and for yourself; buy American.

Thank you.

A good business owner is always looking for ways to improve their business.

1.  Get new ideas is to keep learning; reading articles online and in magazines and books, follow other successful entrepreneurs on Twitter and Facebook, and their website blogs.

2.  Set goals for your changes and improvements, and then make small, manageable, incremental improvements.  You can get to your goal with this approach.

3.  Measure and track your efforts and your results.

• How much did you spend for your advertising last month?
• How many new visitors did your business see as a result of that advertising?   (And ask your visitors which advertisement brought them to you.)
• How many of those visitors made a purchase?   (Did you make a profit from their purchases, or did you pay more for advertising than you made in sales that resulted from that advertising?)

Entrepreneur Michelle Chance-Santhong of Cool Shopping Ideas shares her inspiring progress to improvement, applying some of these concepts in her recent video.

If you have some more suggestions to help small business owners improve their business that you’d like to share, please

• add your Comment below,

• or send us your suggestions to share via our Contact form.

Saturday, November 26, 2011 is the second annual Small Business Saturday, the day after Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving in the United States).

Most big businesses hope for a Black Friday to bring a lot of shoppers out, for a lot of merchandise sales, to put their business “in the black” (as making a profit, versus “in the red” for taking a loss).

On Small Business Saturday, consumers are encouraged to shop the small, local businesses, to support their community and the economy.

American Express has been building support for Small Business Saturday with a Small Business Saturday website, and a social media and PR campaign.

Enjoy helping other small, local businesses by shopping at their stores in your community, throughout the year.

If you’d like to get some of this attention next year, check out the Small Business Saturday website, they offer:

• in-store signage (if you have a brick and mortar business, or to tell other small, local businesses about this program)
• e-marketing materials
• and they had a deal on $100 of free Facebook ads (but they are gone for this year).

Good for the small businesses!

Did you participate in Small Business Saturday this year?

• How did the support help your business?

• Any suggestions you’d like to share with other small, local businesses?

Please leave a comment.

The number of hyperlinks to your website from other websites with good ratings and related topics help improve your search engine ranking when people are searching for the product or service your business provides, using your keywords.

You may have gotten some e-mails recently, asking you if you’d like to have links to your website added to several well-ranking websites.  If you visit those websites, the offer looks good for you.  But then the e-mail says to send them your website linking info (url and brief description of your business product or service), and they will send you the info on the site they want you to link to.  If you respond, many of these offers ask you to post links on your website to low ranking sites with products or services that you probably wouldn’t even visit yourself, much less recommend to your website visitors.

Indirect link exchanges, i.e., several sites exchanging links but not directly with each other, can result in better ranking if the sites have good content on related topics, and are ranked in about the same range.  The ranking boost can be even better than direct link exchanges.

But getting visitors to your website is only part of your concern;

if you have links to websites that you are not very proud of on your website, for your visitors, link exchanges like this can be hurting your business rather than helping it.

Remember that your website represents your brand, and what you stand for.  Just getting another link is not your goal.  Keep making a good impression for your website visitors.

What sort of automated answer message does your business telephone number have?

Does your caller hear a message like:

Hello, this is (your business).  No one is able to come to the telephone now, but if you will please leave your name, telephone number, and a brief message, we’ll be in touch with you as soon as possible.

I was recently surprised to return a missed call and hear:

Hello, if you would like to be removed from our calling list, please press 1.

No business name, no promotional message, but sending a message that sounded to me like their business believed most callers would not want to hear from them again.

When you answer your ‘phone, take a breath and think what kind of impression you want to send to the person who’s calling you, and smile, because people can hear the smile in your voice.

Have you heard some strange automated answering messages?  Please share them with us in a comment.

How can you benefit your business and do something good for your community?  Get involved in your community and help to support a local charity.

For example, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month; there are many local charities that you could volunteer your time and your services to help.

Here in Jacksonville, on October 1st alone, you can take part in:

1. The Pink Ribbon Symposium at the Thrasher-Horne Center for the Arts, in Orange Park.

It’s a free event that offers multiple breakout sessions for your questions with answers from medical experts.  You can join others in volunteering to help to promote learning about breast cancer, survivorship, good health and wellness issues.

• Mary Fisher Design helped out by developing a great website.

2. Victory In Pink is a Celebration of Women Who have Fought Against Breast Cancer by St. Vincent’s Healthcare, at the St. Johns Town Center.  The Celebration is a free event and will include the Pretty In Pink fashion show, with makeovers and massages, the Ladies Night Out Breast Cancer survivor fashion show and education.

• Olympic Gold Medalist Shannon Miller is helping out by being emcee for the event,

And, there will be a special Victory In Pink After Party (with hors d’oevres, gourmet cupcakes, a champagne toast, music, winter fashions, and dancing – - Proceeds from this ticketed event benefit Cancer Services at St. Vincent’s HealthCare through the St. Vincent’s HealthCare Foundation).

3. Bands Against Breast Cancer, a group currently conducting educational and informational activities throughout the First Coast area, is holding their 4th Annual Boobsapalooza, their major fundraiser, with ten bands playing on two stages at Lynch’s Irish Pub.  Founder Henrietta “Hank” Watson has led a group of dedicated volunteers to help educate and empower women to save their own lives in the battle against breast cancer.

Think about a cause you believe in.  Give some of yourself, your time, your services to help.  You’ll feel good for what you do and you will get good back for what you do, just like the motto of Business Networking International, “Givers Gain”.

Do you have a story about how you have helped out with a charity in your community that you’d like to share?  Please send it to us via our Contact form.  We’d like to share your positive story to inspire others.