East Bay SCORE
SCORE – Counselors to America’s Small Business
I’m in Oakland, California today for a presentation to the East Bay chapter of SCORE. Score is an organization of active and retired business executives and small business owners from a wide range of businesses.
SCORE is over 40 years old and has over 10,500 counselors nationwide who provide personalized, confidential counseling. Areas of expertise in the East Bay include:
- Business Planning
- Marketing
- Retail
- Finance
- Strategic Planning
- Succession Planning
- Manufacturing
- Export & Import
- Operations
Regularly scheduled workshops include:
- Starting & Managing Your Small Business
- Export/Import Workshops
- Writing an Effective Business Plan
- The Financial Plan
- The Marketing Plan
- Legal & Insurance Aspects
- Opening a Restaurant
- Retail Basics
- Home Based Business
- Secrets to Buying a Franchise
This mornings meeting was attended by 25 SCORE counselors from around the East Bay. My presentation was on Internet marketing for small businesses.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:01 am
You were absolutely great. I know you got everyone there thinking about how we market SCORE. I thought that it was hilarious when you took our picture and then posted it and a SCORE blog on your website, while our meeting dragged on….about how we should save or toss our form 641. It showed us all how quickly and easliy one can market on the internet..a nice plug for SCORE by the way.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Look below and see what you started.
Would you be kind enough to give me your response to these comments? I suspect some misunderstandings exist therein.
*****
Walter – Note that if you put in ‘east bay score’ into google search …
john harper’s contribution is third and about him not us …
if you try other words and phrases .. john harper’s offer doesn’t come up at all …
the question is … what do potential clients search on? what key words and phrases do they use?
a blog on our web site may be useful though it may be more trouble than it’s worth …
how much time and effort are we willing to expend to attract a client or two?
SCORE is the key word!
Small Business is the key phrase!
Hard to improve our position on Google, we are at the top! So what is it we are trying to do? get more clients? get more money?
Keith – Walter, I think the point is to bring people to the our Chapter’s site. So any key words in our blog that are searched by someone will bring them to our site to read the blog. Granted, many will have no interest in our Chapter activities as many who Googled “East Bay Score” and got the Harper-Mees site will have no interest in real estate. However, some will be interested either for themselves or for someone they know. So what if it takes 1000 hits to connect with one client? No skin off our nose.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:20 am
Keith
First, Thanks for the opportunity to speak to SCORE.
SCORE is not the keyword and small business is not the key phrase when it comes to reaching the vast number of potential clients that have never heard of you.
Potential clients will be searching on hundreds, even thousands of word combinations that you can’t begin to imagine.
Blogging accomplishes three things that a traditional website does not.
1. It puts a personal face on SCORE. People like doing business with people they know.
2. It boosts your “Google Juice” – giving your site more credibility in the eyes of the search engines that rank your search returns.
3. It establishes you as the authority on what you write about.
In addition, the blog allows you to interact with your audience through the comments feature.
If you had 30 SCORE small business counselors writing 1 to 2 posts a month on what they are teaching or advising, it will boggle your mind in about 6 months – the increase in activity on your site.
I find Walter’s comment about the possibility of finding only 1 or 2 new clients interesting. I would think that finding 1 or 2 new clients that could really use your services would be worth the minimal effort it would take.