Category: 30-SECOND READ (Page 8 of 11)

My 30-second read blog posts give you a quick hit of marketing or small business knowledge.

Easy Side Hustle Right from Home

February 6, 2022 / Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

Need an easy side hustle right from home?

How about one with no start up costs?

Therefore, you will love the business idea behind neighbor.com.

If you want to make some money on the side using your house and/or property as storage for someone’s car, boat or personal items, this marketplace will list your services and find you customers.

This is a really fabulous idea for you if you live near a college, as out-of-town students need to store their stuff over the summer months.

Not to worry, Insurance is covered as part of the sales commission they charge you.

About Me

Do you need your Brand Story written or an SEO-Optimized Blog Post or a Personalized Business Consultation? As a 20+ year marketing professional and small business consultant, all of my services are super affordable.

I have consulted for thousands of small businesses since 2012, and my advice has been featured in the NY Times, Success Magazine, Yahoo Business, American Express, Big Commerce, Business2Community to name a few – so this is professional advice you can trust!

My Publicity Pitch service has also gotten my clients featured in Real Simple Magazine, Apartment Therapy, House Beautiful, Vanity Fair, Houzz, Martha Stewart, Glamour Magazine, LONNY, DesignMilk, Emmaline Bride,– just to name a few.

Local SEO Optimization for Small Businesses

January 30, 2022 / Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

Local SEO Optimization Tip for Small Businesses Are you trying to figure out local SEO optimization for small businesses? It also starts with the words you use in your website’s title tag.

A title tag will be obvious on the SEO page of your website. It is typically what you call your website, but that is not really want you should make it. If you do not fill it it, Google will just random choose from any words on your home page, but you don’t want that either.

Let’s say you are looking for Italian Food in Stowe Vermont, here is a good example of a restaurant that did their title tag correctly:

The title tag is the portion in blue. They started with the name of the restaurant, then they stated what type of restaurant, then they followed with the city and state. This is perfect.

Now, you don’t typically have to put in the city and state as Google is smart enough to know where you are, but it does give you an advantage when people do a “near me” search. “Near me” searches are the most popular local searches, for example, “pizza near me”, “grocery store near me”, “vet near me”.

Then you have to think of all of the other ways that many people will search for a local business. Believe it or not, they search using words such as:

Top
Best
Good

Therefore, you will want to try to work these keywords into your site’s title tag as well.

I personally feel it is better to lead with what your business is, then the location, then the name because Google will only read the first 60 characters, so you do not want the actual search phrase to get cut off.

Once you have decided your title tag, then make sure your meta description incorporates the keywords for a one-two punch. The meta description in the example above is the wording below the title tag, and you can see how they repeat their business name, type of restaurant and location. This is why it came up on the first page of Google results when I search “Italian restaurants Stowe Vermont”.

When writing a title tag and meta description, you also want to think about the keywords people use for your type of business. In the example above, you can see how they incorporated the words “casual” and “family” into the meta description. This is because this is how people search for restaurants, i.e. family restaurant, casual restaurant, takeout restaurant.

I hope this helps you understand how to improve local SEO optimization for small businesses.

Shop my business downloads at my Etsy store and my business & marketing services at my Shopify store.

ALSO READ: 3 Tips for a Successful Resume

Free Publicity Opportunity for Black Business Owners

January 23, 2022 / Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

Free Publicity Black Business Owners Next month presents a great free publicity opportunity for black business owners.

If you’re a black-owned business, you should be spending this week pitching your success story to business and lifestyle blogs (as well as your local media) in hopes of being included in next month’s most popular editorial “Black Businesses to Support in Honor of Black History month”.

Every publication and blog from Oprah to Reader’s Digest to Yahoo to Glamour wrote an article like this last year.

Be Sure to Also Check Out

Get Inspired by this Brilliant Product Idea from Bauble Bar

January 9, 2022 / Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

I love creative product ideas, and this Pixar Toy Story Mr Potato Head stacking ring from Bauble Bar is brilliant. It lends to the nature of the Mr. Potato Head product, merged with a stacking ring, which have been so trendy the last few years. Plus, it makes a perfect gift for the Toy Story fan.

© 2022 Gail Oliver. All rights reserved.

Publicity Grabbing Product Idea from Salt & Straw

January 2, 2022 / Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

People love trends, and the media loves writing about trends. So if you were to do a limited time product (or service), like this ice cream 5-pack from Salt & Straw with flavors that were inspired by the year’s most viral moments, you will likely be able to get some free press.

The ice cream pack was featured on Food Network, Mashable, The Hypebeast and Reddit, so naturally it sold out.

© 2022 Gail Oliver. All rights reserved.

New Take on a Classic Product from Anthropologie

December 26, 2021 / Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

Even though you can get thousands of recipes for free online, hard copy recipe books still sell really well. However, I like when people take a classic product, like a recipe book and re-think it.

This deck of recipe cards for ideas for cheese boards from Anthropologie is brilliant because it answers one of the few pain points of a recipe book – you don’t have to pull out a big book and prop it open, you just pull out a card. Plus, there’s not cooking required!

Do you sell a classic product that you could re-think?



© 2021 Gail Oliver. All rights reserved.

Easy Way to Get Year End Publicity

December 19, 2021 / Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

The end of the year is always a fun time for brands to try and get some free publicity for their business by predicting a trend for 2022. For example, in early December Pantone always announces their color for 2022.

Now, 1-800-flowers followed this trend and named their plant and flower for 2022. It worked, they got a mention on Apartment Therapy, House Beautiful and PureWow, to name a few.

So try it with your own business. At very least, you can use it to get local publicity or maybe go viral on social media.

© 2022 Gail Oliver. All rights reserved.

How a Product Collaboration Can Quickly Expand Your Market

December 5, 2021 / Gail Oliver, Online Small Business Consultant

You can easily broaden your market if you partner on a product with another non-competitive business.

For example, if you’re an illustrator or artist why not offer some of your designs to a ceramics seller. This holiday plate from Anthropologie is a good example. Not only do you split the profits, but your art is now exposed to their customers and vice versa. Twice the marketing power!