Non-traditional Marketing

Today I would like to talk briefly about offline marketing or non traditional marketing. I must admit that when I started my business in 2005, and for many years thereafter, I marketed entirely online. And this works great. Initially, I used my website, this blog, my Facebook business page (when it became available), submitted to directories like Gumtree, etc, etc. It was a 24 hour job to get my name out there, and I didn't rest, doing it night after night while I had my full time job, and day and night after night after I began doing it full time.

However, last year a friend of mine started his own business and I followed his progress with interest, noting his style of marketing his business offline. He went the whole hog getting Tshirts done, pens and other corporate products made. I don't necessarily advocate this type of approach when your business is going to be mainly online, but it does depend on the type of service you offer and how big your company is going to be.

At that stage I remembered that I HAD done some offline marketing in my time of starting the business. I printed notices, brochures, etc and distributed them at all the local shopping centres including pinning them up on notice boards. I walked the streets of our suburb flat distributing brochures and telling people what I did.

Last year however on the back of my friend promoting his business, I entered into a barter agreement with a local printing company and had them print brochures for me. These I hand out EVERYWHERE.

What do you do for your offline marketing activities?

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Santa Shoebox

Hey everybody, 

There are many people who would like to give a little extra at Christmas but don't know how. It's not easy to get to a place to drop off donations, or you don't know specific organisations or places or people to give to, or you need a little direction. 

The Santa Shoebox project needs your help. And it's also something your company can do .... to fill that corporate social investment need. 

The Santa Shoebox Project is an inspiring community initiative of the Kidz2Kidz Trust (IT2671/2009, PBO 930031301 Section18A NPO 102-098) that co-ordinates the donation, collection and distribution of personalized gifts at Christmas time to underprivileged children across South Africa and Namibia. 

Participating is a profoundly valuable and personal experience with each donor selecting the child he or she chooses to pledge a Santa Shoebox for by name, gender and age. 

 

They have 85,000 boxes pledged and they need to get to 100,000. We can't have some children not receiving anything while their friends do. Get to it!! Typewrite Transcription is fully in support of this initiative and salutes the Santa Shoebox organisers. Please remember to like us on Facebook and follow the blog. You are more than welcome to reference our material or follow our blog but please link back to us.

Business Communication

Good morning all, this is a very quick post but it's about communication particularly in a business scenario.

Communication done well is a very effective business tool, and done badly, it can be dangerous. With all the forms of media both online and offline that are at our disposal today, it's very important to get our message across in an effective, concise and clear way, particularly if we are using it for business purposes.

My short and brief rule of thumb that I tell clients is the following: Use your website for static things that don't change much like your contact details and your about us page. Use your blog for longer things that you want to communicate like new products, industry norms and standards, information you want to share. Use your Facebook page for day to day things and to engage your fanbase in conversation. And then, link them all together and ensure that they all impart the same sort of general feel.

This post was inspired by a very ambiguous communication I received this morning, about concert tickets which left me wondering whether the person had them, wanted them or couldn't stand them!

I have research interviews to transcribe today so I'm out of here - have a great day all!  Please remember to click through my site and get in touch if you need my services.  Please follow our blog and like us on Facebook

Available job

Minute takers in Johannesburg sought for the end of this week. Please contact client direct - I don't know any more about this job and don't have time to answer questions :-) Levison 0764946941

RSS directories for Search Engine Optimisation

Hi guys, I've discovered something new.

 Part of what is needed to get websites seen by search engines is backlinks and the quality of your site rating. I tested my site rating and found it wasn't as high as I'd like it to be. I then discovered that there is a whole aspect of something I haven't been doing - submitting my RSS feed of my blog to directories. Apparently by doing this I'll vastly increase my backlinks and I should get quality ones as well. This is how you find your RSS feed for your blog (assuming you use blogger) http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss You can use this to do some free automatic submissions for you. What this means is that people will be able to visit these directories, find your site or other sites they are interested in and have your site's feed turn up on their homepage or on their own site.. so keep updating your blogs.