Despite the benefits of online contact any time, from anywhere, personal interaction is as good for business now as it was 20 years ago. In the world away from your desktop, your competitors are shaking hands with your potential customers over lunch or a laugh right now. What are you waiting for? Get out of the office and network.

Making personal business connections may take longer, but they are potentially as important as driving web traffic and planning your advertising campaigns. For relatively little expense, seeking industry events and other face-to-face business opportunities should form an equal part of your marketing strategy.

When business is slow, mass marketing or email marketing your existing clients seems the obvious low-cost option to generate sales, but forging personal networks with face-to-face contact brings a unique set of advantages. And there’s no ‘delete’ key.

Networking builds trust

The important thing missing from online contact is the real connections that create genuine trust.

The advantage good networkers enjoy is access to more private or useful knowledge only available through personal contact. Filing unmanageable amounts of downloaded documents or exchanging emails is no replacement for conversations that spill over into further mutual contacts and unexpected opportunities.

Meeting with people also brings different skill sets to a business relationship. Online, you tend to stick to one topic or problem. Where a gathering incorporates socializing, common interests outside business tend to crop up too, leading to wider networks and experiences. continue

Pro Painting Net started out as something. Now it’s evolving into something else.

We started out creating well optimized mini-sites as an additional online presence to help painting contractors generate leads…and it’s working!  Our page holders are getting ranked in Google and generating some leads:  Here’s what one of our page holders had to say recently:

I just landed my second job from the PPN site.  Thanks a bunch!

Mark Bromfield, Richmond VA

What we have found out from our clients is that they want and need more, so Pro Painting Net is now offering or will be offering in the coming weeks the following search engine marketing services and more:

• SEO Audit of your Website
• Key Word Research
• Competition Analysis
• Site Optimization
• PPC Management

What our clients need more than anything is reliable, concise information about Internet Marketing.

As a business owner, you are likely bombarded weekly if not daily by companies who say they are the answer to search engine marketing. How do you know what to believe?  We can help.

Sign up for our free newsletter.  Here’s what’s in it for you:

How do you keep up with all the latest online developments?  How do you decide which web strategies and tactics to employ?  You’re busy running a successful painting business - where are you supposed to find the time to conquer the internet too?

You don’t have to - we’ve got your back. continue

This past December, QuickBooksTM added an online payroll option to their payroll lineup of QuickBooksTM Basic Payroll, Enhanced Payroll and Intuit’s Payroll Service.  How do you decide which one is best for you and your company?  Let’s take a look.
QuickBooksTM Basic Payroll – Allows you to create paychecks to pay your employees using the most current federal and state payroll tax rates.  You have the ability to print federal payroll tax forms, but not state payroll tax forms.   I don’t generally recommend this version, since it does not come with the state payroll forms.  continue

Absolutely!! Harassment and discrimination claims in the workplace should not be taken lightly.   The Department of Fair Employment & Housing defines sexual harassment as harassment based on sex or of a sexual nature; gender harassment; and harassment based on pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.

Every company, even companies with one employee, are required to take actions against sexual harassment and to have a sexual harassment policy.  The guidelines employers must follow are clearly outlined in the “Facts about Sexual Harassment” DFEH – 185 pamphlet.

At the time a complaint occurs, the employer must:  quickly stop the harassment; investigate; properly discipline if harassment is proven; correct the effects of the harassment; put actions into place to ensure harassment does not recur.  At no time shall the employee be retaliated against for filing a complaint. continue

Professional Painters - Do YOU want to show up on Google’s first page in the top ranked search terms for painting contractors in your local area and get leads?

Advisors On Target has added a new service and we want our clients and newsletter readers to have the first opportunity to see what we have going on and to participate if you are interested. Advisors On Target and Web Strategy Lab have teamed up to launch Pro Painting Net, which we believe will be of tremendous value to our clients.

Are you ready to get better business results online?  Then claim YOUR local service area now with your own Pro Painting Net Mini-Site!

All 3 of our On Target Beta-Testers are on the front page of Google for the top ranking search term with their locale! This happened within days.

Some of you may be able to say you are already on the top 10 listings in Google, if so, Congratulations. But most of you are not ranking where one of your sites have the best chance of being found.

Would you like to be here? Look at these results for Painting Contractor and On Target group member, Mario Guertin

Now you too can be a part of Pro Painting Net - a network of websites built around the highest volume painting-related keywords on the search engines. What’s in it for you?

• You get your own 3-page ‘mini-sites’ optimized for local searches for your painting services in any of your service areas.
• You get exclusive rights on any PPN Domain to any service area you choose - and you define the service areas.
• You get quality backlinks to your existing website.
• You benefit from the success of every other member of the Network.
• By the way, it’s very affordable

Your Mini-site is meant to be a piece of your online presence – another way to get you found and will in most cases rank faster and higher than you can get your “main” website to rank for the top search terms

But does it really work? We asked 3 On Target Members to be beta-testers for this new program, one in a small market and two in larger markets but using a the name of a local service area within the larger market as a key word. Here are our Beta Tester stats from March 1, 2009 for the term “house painting” followed by the local name: continue

While the jury is still out on just how effective a presence in the social media networks is for small brick and mortar service businesses, many product driven businesses,  public professionals like speakers and authors and, of course, internet marketers are doing very well.  As a coach and small business consultant I have been monitoring social media and creating my own presence there.

The time is ripe, I believe, for small business owners of any type, including the contractors who make up much of my readership, to take the plunge into social networks and create a professional presence.

Over 35 Million people use LinkedIn, the professional network and over 200 Million use FaceBook which has a growing community of business pages as well as personal profiles.  Twitter is also growing by leaps and bounds.  In fact Twitter and FaceBook are the leading social networks with LinkedIn a distant third.  I think that small businesses should have a presence on all three.

When you think about it where do most of your leads come from?  For most of my clients the top three sources of leads are existing customers, referrals from existing customers and referrals from strategic partners.  Online social networks are another just venue for your customers and strategic partners to connect you with other potential customers.

Advisors On Target will continue to provide support and resources to help your business maximize your professional presence in online social networks.  Here are two ways you can make sure you stay in touch on upcoming events and resources:  Send us an email or Join our Advisors On Target Business Success Groups on LinkedIn and FaceBook.

I just returned from New Orleans (I’m still in mourning about having to come home) where I participated in PACE 2009, the annual national convention for the painting and decorating industry.  Between manning the Advisors On Target booth at the trade show and presenting an educational program on web strategies, I had the opportunity to meet and talk to hundreds of painting contractors about their online efforts and results.

Not surprisingly, I found a wide range in the general level of web competence among the business owners I talked to.  Some were pretty savvy internet marketers, looking for subtle ways to improve their already strong results online.  Others were just getting going – either starting from scratch or looking to revamp old, tired websites and strategies that aren’t up to 21st century standards.  But nearly everybody had one thing in common.  Everybody was aware that online performance is critical in today’s business and social climate – that your web presence it the most cost-effective way to promote your business, and that more and more consumers rely exclusively on the internet to find and evaluate local businesses.

I was pleased to see so much awareness and so much determination to master the tools and techniques of internet success.  But I was shocked by the number of business people who mangle their credibility by overlooking a simple thing – their email address. continue