Creating a warm welcome to your business can include sharing simple videos online. Here are some simple ways to get started. Photo by Chris Brogan.

By Chris Brogan

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes, it might be worth a thousand dollars, too. Over the last ten years, restaurants and bars who post their best dishes or drinks as photos on sites like Instagram have learned that people love seeing examples of what they’ll get if they drop by for a drink or a bite. As great as a photograph might be, I thought I’d talk a moment about why you should consider video as part of your selling toolkit, even if that feels a little scary to think about at first.

Video Shows People Your Business in Special Ways

No matter what you sell, a video goes a long way to giving your prospects and customers new opportunities to experience your business. If you have a service business, like plumbing or landscaping, spend time interviewing the team and give people a sense of the folks who work there. If you sell a product, show off that product, the making of, the behind the scenes. All that.

There are a few ways to do this. You can shoot videos that are somewhat generic to the business at large, which are great. But you might even consider putting together a few “for special customer” videos. Instead of a product video, it can be “Claire, I know you love when we get in new fabrics. You’re going to love this batch we just got from South Dakota.” My friend Mick sends kids that collect various comic books photos and videos of their specific Wednesday deliveries and that ups his sales a lot!

Is Video Hard to Make?

No. (Boy, I wish I could end this section right there.) You use a smartphone. There’s a video camera in there. If you practice even a little bit and learn to hold the phone sideways (landscape, they call it), you can probably shoot a video. There are free editor apps for iOS or Android aplenty. And you can upload it for free to YouTube (which is also free).

If you want to edit on your computer, Microsoft Photos has editing tools on a PC and iMovie works easily on a Mac. When I say “edit,” realize that most of the time, I don’t mean much more than learning how to cut and paste a little bit. That’s all. (You can search YouTube for “how to edit movies using ____” and you’ll see tons of free tutorials.)

Small Town Business Runs Better on Video

When I was a kid, my grandfather lived out on a farm in rural Maine. There was an old timey general store about two miles from the house, but any full-line stores were about 45 minutes away. “Going into town” was something of a pilgrimage. Sometimes, we’d be smart and call ahead to a store if we wanted something specific, like when we needed rock salt to make a hand churned ice cream turn out just right. Other times, we’d forget and drive all the way into town to find they didn’t have what we needed.

The world searches online before they go anywhere these days. And that means big companies try to take your customers at every turn. One way to compete is to get video of your products and of the people in your company up online so that people develop a relationship with you. If it’s a choice between some faceless corporation and “Old Alva’s Garden Supply,” there’s a chance you can win over buyers who will trust your advice over some faceless competition.

Let’s Run This Down Really Quick

Pretend I’ve convinced you. Here’s what to do:

1. Get a free YouTube account (name it after your business or yourself – either way.)
2. Practice shooting brief videos (1-3 minutes tops usually goes best)
3. OPTIONAL – If you’re you’re feeling clever, learn to edit a little, and turn a series of clips into one video.
4. Upload your videos to YouTube
5. Promote them by posting on your website where it makes sense, and/or by pointing to the videos through your email marketing efforts.

And that’s it. If you ever get stuck or have a question, you know you can always ask me. My email is chris@chrisbrogan.com . Feel free to drop me a line. And hey, show me your videos!

The Blue Yeti USB Microphone is highly popular, but its sensitivity can overwhelm you. Photo (CC) by LTD Team

The drawback to Yeti Blue USB Microphones for podcasting

Yeti Blue microphones are widely popular for podcasting and home sound recording. They do have a big drawback of being overly sensitive. They pick up too much background noise even when the gain is turned way down. I know because I bought one for my own podcasting and video streaming and had a hard time getting good sound with it.

The Wrong Advice

Most of the advice I found online says to turn the gain knob on the Yeti down to the absolute minimum. That avoids picking up too much background sound, but then the audio is really quiet and almost unusable. The wrong advice says to amplify that sound at the computer or in your software.

The resulting sound I got using this advice was what I would describe as hollow.

The Contrarian Advice that Works Better

A few contrarians online say to turn the gain knob higher and turn down input level at the computer or software. That worked for me. The sound was much richer, and without picking up all the background noise.

Here are the exact steps I followed

The gain knob is the top one on the back of the Yeti. Most advice says turn it as far down as you can. That advice is wrong. Photo (CC) by LTD Team

1. I plugged my best set of headphones directly into the Yeti so I could monitor the sound while I made adjustments.
2. I turned the gain knob on the back of the Yeti all the way up. I could hear EVERYTHING.
3. I opened the Windows Sound Settings by typing “sound settings” into the Windows search box.
4. In the Sound Settings, I scrolled down to the Input devices.
5. I made sure the Yeti mic was selected, then clicked Device Properties.
6. I adjusted the volume down to around 50.

Much better!

I adjusted the two settings a little bit each way, until my voice sounded the best I could get and I couldn’t hear my wall clock ticking.

I ended up with the Yeti gain knob down about a quarter of the way and the Windows volume set at 75.

You don’t have to do it every time

I made these changes one time in Sound Settings, and now Windows seems to remember for me. Whenever I hook or plug in my Yeti, it’s ready to go. I don’t have to do anything extra.

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If you’re interested in small town small business, feel free to check out some of our best stuff: 

• What businesses would work in a small town? Filling empty buildings
• How to set retail prices and markups
• The 7 Most Common Weaknesses of Local Shops And what we’re all going to do about them

101 Ways to Start More Tiny Businesses

If you need more business ideas, 101 Ways to Start More Tiny Businesses is a short ebook detailing ways to spread economic opportunity as well as why tiny businesses matter. Sign up here to download it and you’ll also get our weekly newsletters where Deb Brown and I share practical steps you can put into action right away to shape the future of your town. Download 101 Ways here.
I will never sell or rent your email address to anyone else because I wouldn’t like that either.

Quick! Where is the switch for the outdoor lights? With an older building, it can be hard to tell. Via Pixabay

Older downtown buildings in small towns are a good use for “smart home” technology. Small businesses struggling with vintage or outdated electrical systems can use smart outlets to control displays more easily.

I thought of this when I was in a local retail store at closing time. The owner and a clerk were talking about which switch controlled which holiday lights and how some of the lights don’t have a switch because they’re plugged into an outlet, but the outlet is high up on the wall and hard to get to. If they put smart switches into the the outlets then plugged the lights into those, they could control all the lights from their phone. No step ladder required.

What else could you control in your business using a smart switch or outlet? Could you set up automated lighting routines that come on and off without you having to remember? How else would you use smart home or smart building tools in your small business?

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If only podcasting was simple and used the tool that is most often in your hands… Photo (CC0) by jeshoots on pixabay

Podcasting is a powerful way to build a connection with people. They hear your voice and feel like they get to know you.

The problem with podcasting is it seems like a big hassle. You’re going to need equipment like a good mic, software to record and edit your audio, and some way to host the files. Then you need to figure out this distribution problem.

Podcasting could be much easier

With Anchor, all you need is your phone, and you’re ready to start podcasting. You already have all the equipment you need (your phone), and they take care of the heaving lifting of hosting and distribution.

Read the “how to start a podcast” guide at Anchor.

I used to use a similar podcast-from-your-phone platform called Utterz that was around from 2007-2010. It was great at the time, and its demise is a good reminder that platforms come and go. Download and save copies of any important audio you create with them.

Need more podcast advice?

Read our podcasting basics here. I’ve added some notes on which steps you can skip if you use Anchor or a similar tool.

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Your customers are placing orders with voice assistants right now. They just aren’t ordering from you. Here’s what to do about that. Photo by Andres Urena on Unsplash

People are happily using smart voice assistants more than ever. You know their names: Alexa, Siri, Google, Cortana. It’s so easy (and fun!) to just say what you want, and your magical assistant orders it for you. Then it shows up at your doorstep, and you’re living in the future!

This isn’t great for small town and independent retailers. You just got cut out of the order process. Unless…

Unless we could find a way to get Alexa and friends to talk to your store. And it turns out there is. Here is the trick you need to know:

Your customers don’t ask Alexa to order. They ask her to send a message.

Alexa and Siri and the others will all send any message to anyone, as long as they have the necessary skills and contact info.

Here’s what that looks like. I’ll use Alexa in all these, but they could work with any of the voice assistants.

Send an email

• You don’t want your customer to say “Alexa, order lemon soap” because that will always default to ordering through Amazon
• You do want your customer to say “Alexa, email the The Copper Penny Store and say ‘Send me a bar of that lemon soap you know I love.”

Send a text

• Bad: “Alexa, order a pepperoni pizza,” which will go to their paid partners
• Good: “Alexa, text the Olive Pit Pizza Place and say ‘I want a large pepperoni delivered,'” which will go straight to the local store

Make a call

• Good: “Alexa, call the Olive Pit Pizza.”
• Good: “Alexa, call The Copper Penny Store.”

How to teach these new tricks to Alexa, Siri and friends

In order to make this work, your customers have to do a little setup work. Depending on how comfortable you are with the technical stuff, you can decide how much or how little you’ll help them.

If you have zero technical skills

Right now, some of your customers are early-adopter types. They not only have a voice assistant, but they use it all the time. They already know how to add a contact and send a message. You just have to prompt them with the idea that they can use it to reach you.

• Easy to-do: add “Ask Alexa email us at ________ to place an order” to all your ads and social channels

If you have medium technical skills

If you have any Alexa enabled device, you can call out and receive calls from any other Alexa device. So you could actually set up an Echo Dot in your store. It would be like another phone line, of sorts. Then you just let customers know they can call you via Alexa. Here’s a CNBC article walking you through the voice-calling setup process. (Of course, the exact process will change over time.)

• Medium to-do: get an Alexa device like an Echo Dot in your store and give out the contact info to customers who also have an Alexa-enabled device

If you have all the technical skillz

If you’re the technical sort and good at writing directions, then you can show customers how to do the setup, in an easy way. Even if you only know how to work with one of the assistants, then you can give instructions for that one. If you are super savvy with more than one, hey, go for it and write instructions for them all.

• Difficult to-do: write a one-page cheatsheet to walk customers through the setup
• Bonus round: set up a demo in your store and show customers how to do the setup

Testing, testing

Be sure you test your plan with your own voice assistant, then enlist friends and family to help you test. Once you’re sure you can do this, start inviting in your customers. Suddenly, you’re the coolest store in town.

“Siri, call the liquor store.” 

(Uh oh. Siri isn’t 21.)

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When your mailing address means nothing to outsiders, you need a different way to give directions. A new 3 word tool could work. Photo by Becky McCray.

You know how we give directions in small towns, right? We point you to houses by who used to live there, “the Allen place,” or direct you to turn where things used to be, “where that old barn burned down.” We do this in town and out in the country. This drives newcomers and visitors bananas. A new online tool has a potential solution, and it might include the word “bananas.”

We give directions like this because we sorta think everyone knows where everything is (and used to be.) Maybe the addresses aren’t very logical or helpful, or maybe you don’t even have addresses.

This turns into a serious issue when you’re trying to get packages delivered, trying to help customers find you, or trying to put together a driving tour for tourists. These are all important to rural businesses.

GPS Almost Works

We’ve been trying to solve all this with GPS coordinates, but those are not exactly people-friendly. Ever try to tell someone a string of GPS numbers for an exact location, while fighting poor reception on your phone? Or enter a location’s pair of 8 digit numbers into your car’s built-in navigation? This is no fun.

3 Word Addresses

Enter the 3 word address. A company called What 3 Words has assigned a precise name to every location on earth, within a few feet or meters.

They divided the globe into a series of 3m x 3m (or 3 yards x 3 yards) squares and assigned a unique set of 3 words to each grid.

“Now everyone and everywhere has a reliable address,” they promise.

Go to What3Words.com and put in your address. They’ll give you a 3 word combination. Want to send people to the back gate? Point to it on the map, and you’ll get a different set of 3 words.

• Here’s the 3 word address for our liquor store’s back door for deliveries (living.race.kook)
• Here’s the location of one of the hard-to-find murals in Alva, at the BNSF maintenance shed (contribution.makeup.blogs)

Are you starting to think of some uses? Car companies are already building this into their navigation systems. Delivery companies are using it. Emergency services are using it.

A 3 word address could solve these common rural addressing challenges:

• Your street address may not reflect where your house is
• Your postal address may not reflect what town you’re actually in or nearest to
• Your address might show up in online maps in the wrong location (Here’s what to do if Google Maps has your business in the wrong place on their map)
• Your address might not show up in the databases that power online maps for delivery services (mine doesn’t)
• The street address may get people to your front gate, but not all the way up the road to your place
• You might need to send people to a specific part of your property, like a back entrance or a loading dock
• City people may be more likely to use apps like Waze that may not have full info on your small town (Here’s how to update your town’s map in Waze)
• Your local officials may have updated all the addresses, but online sources are lagging behind
• Interesting features along a trail may not have addresses
• You might need emergency medical help on a remote part of your property, and cell signal location may not help because you may have to send someone to where they can get signal before they can call for help
• In a natural disaster, street signs and landmarks may be gone

How could you use 3 word addresses to simplify your town for people?

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Becky McCray being interviewed by Amy Pearl on Facebook Live at the Mid Valley Rural Development Conference in Oregon. Photo by Danielle Gonzalez.

Live streaming video provides you new ways to reach customers and promote your small business. Today’s tools include Facebook Live, Instagram and Snapchat Live Stories, Google Hangouts that stream live on YouTube, Periscope video that streams on Twitter, and even stolid old LinkedIn that will let you pipe in live video from your Facebook Live feed.

These tools are always changing, so I know that list will be outdated soon. You know what won’t change? The way you use live video to reach people. Here are some tips and ways you can use live video to promote your small business in your small town.

Live video streaming tips

Live video is best for immediate events. What is happening right now? That makes live video a natural match for live events, special sales, happenings, visiting experts or special showings. Make it seem like such a good time that people want to take a break from whatever they were doing so they can rush down to join you. You’re in a small town, so use that sense of connection.

Live video is informal. Don’t worry about a script, but do have an idea of what you want to say. You don’t have to be polished and professional. Just give yourself a moment or two to think through your key points before you start shooting live. Then be your best small town self: friendly.

Live video takes a little time to draw a crowd. Give your audience some time to gather up. Don’t make latecomers feel like they missed all the good stuff. Feature the good stuff throughout, and make sure to repeat your key points more than once.

What should you show on live video?

Feature your local area: 

• Livestream local events
• Show off area attractions
• Show what there is to do in this town
• Show us the causes you support and how they make a difference

Show your products: 

• Livestream your products working in the real world
• Show how to maintain them, reload them or keep them going

Show your customers: 

• Profile your customers
• Show how you solve problems for customers
• Say thank you to a customer, live on video

Show your people:

• Introduce people who work for you
• Livestream your people helping customers

Feature yourself: 

• Tell your founding story
• Talk about future plans
• Share your vision and passion

Feature your manufacturing or production: 

• Livestream the production process
• Show how high your quality is
• Demonstrate your safety

Show your suppliers: 

• Livestream from your suppliers, all the way back to the farm field or the raw materials
• Show how your suppliers make a difference in the community

Feature your knowledge:

• Teach us something
• Show us insider tricks
• Show us traps to avoid
• Livestream quick interviews of your visiting experts
• Livestream tidbits from conferences and events

Do you have a live video success story to share? Or a question? Let’s hear it!

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I hate photos of small towns with empty streets. I found this great photo with people in downtown St. Albans, Vermont, on Pixabay.

Between writing blog posts, sharing on social media, and creating graphics for my business, I’m always using photos. As much as possible, I use my own photos or ones that rural friends have shared with me with permission to re-use them. But I still find places I need a photo that I don’t have in my collection. You probably run into the same issues in your business, so high time to update our series* on where to find good photos you can use.

Three of my favorite current sites for photos you can use for personal or business needs that don’t cost anything are:

• Pixabay – makes it easy to see image sizes and what the file size will be before you download
• Pexels – makes it easy to download them by opening the image in a new window/tab for you to save
• Unsplash – makes it copy-and-paste simple to give a credit to the photographer, even though it isn’t required

Other sites worth mentioning help with special applications:

• MockupWorld has some free stock photos, but also has mockups you can edit, like photos of billboards, smartphones, and book covers you can customize with your graphic, making it look like your product is out there in the real world
• GetColorStock isn’t free, but has high quality photos of people of color in useful collections like family, technology, healthy lifestyles and more
• Update: I’ve just found PicNoi, which has a smaller collection of photos of people of color, at no charge

*Here are the previous articles in our photo resource series:

• What are the restrictions on using photos you find online?
• How to use old photos in tourism
• More photos for your tourism promotions: Wikimedia Commons
• Finding photos to use online: Flickr Creative Commons
• The US government has tourism photos for you
• and a reminder: If you don’t do this one thing, you might as well delete all photos from your site

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Could it be as simple as asking customers what’s missing from your inventory? Photo of @StarGardener by Becky McCray

How can local businesses build more sales through social media? Just ask for requests, then answer them.

Your fellow reader Julie Barr wrote in with this example she spotted:

Hi Becky,

I knew you would appreciate how our local liquor store took to social media to increase their business! Here’s what they did:

The Apple Barrel posted on their Facebook page, asking their customers to let them know what is missing in their inventory, or what new product lines they could carry. And the requests “poured” (pun intended) in. Then, they responded to each and every one of the comments.

“Hey, thanks, that’s a great idea!” “We will have that in for you on Friday, Julie!” “While that’s a seasonal item, Mallory, we put it on our list for next fall!” “We will ask our distributor to hunt that down for you, Joe.” “We’ll have it here tomorrow for you, Susan.” And on and on.

As customers, each of our requests were treated individually, AND most wishes were granted. (The guy that asked about a deli counter may have to wait a bit, but it sounds like it might be in future plans.) The store didn’t flat out ask for orders, or just say they take special orders, they took it a few steps further, engaged their audience in thinking about specifics, and offered exceptional customer service for ALL to see. I’m picking up my very special order later today. TGIF!

Simple and effective use of social media.

Great idea, and thanks for sharing it, Julie!

Marketing a rural business is never easy. Standing out from the crowd of larger businesses with bigger budgets isn’t easy, but social media has made the marketing world a much smaller place. At the same time, it may feel that there are too many social media platforms to choose from for marketing your business. You may be right. Choosing can be overwhelming.

Starting with a Facebook page and a Twitter feed is a great starting point, but don’t overlook some of the more niche social media platforms. Pinterest is the perfect alternative or even addition to Etsy, as it allows for more immediate social interaction, broadening your customer base. For video creation and sharing, look no further than Vimeo, the perfect alternative to YouTube for business owners doing video creation themselves. Let’s examine how these two platforms can be best used by rural businesses.

Pinterest

You may think Pinterest is fun to play with, but won’t help drive business to your site or to your store. That’s just not true. The platform began as a social media bookmarking site and tool. Most of the first registered users shared recipes, clothes, and artwork they found online.

Today, Pinterest has evolved into a powerful business tool. The platform offers business accounts to users who wish to market either themselves or their businesses.

You can even track analytics data for your pins, boards, and clicks to your website. In today’s world of data-driven social media marketing, the ability to track analytics on a site like Pinterest is impressive. Business owners can drill down from impressions, what Pinterest calls views, to clicks, pinpointing locations of their customers.

For business owners like my parents, who live in a small community and use their skills to create jewelry and metalwork, marketing via Pinterest is ideal. Why?  Because of the visuals. Pinterest attracts users through images pinned from the web. If you’re a jeweler, like my mom, making your products stand out among the crowd is key: the more repins for a pin under “handmade copper jewelry,” the closer to the top of the search results it will be:

For rural artisans like my mom who are selling, pins can link either to an e-commerce site like Etsy or be one of Pinterest’s own buyable pins:

Pinterest has now set up its own e-commerce platform, allowing your customers to buy directly from you without linking to another site like Etsy. For rural businesses, this also gives customers from around the world greater access to your goods and services.

If your small business is service based, marketing on Pinterest is all about telling a story through visuals. For a rural welding service, marketing via Pinterest would be about showcasing completed projects, from the simple to the intricate.

Set up boards that showcase different stages of completion for projects. Customers who appreciate your work want to see how you do it. Hells Canyon Adventures (HCA), based in Oxbow, Oregon, and in Council, Idaho, uses Pinterest to share its customer’s experiences. It also posts videos taken on its white water adventures. Videos such as these not only show off your products or services, they come in handy for other social media platforms, like Vimeo.

Vimeo

Vimeo can work in conjunction with your other marketing platforms and channels to bring your customers to you, especially Pinterest. Vimeo has a much smaller audience than YouTube, reaching about 170 million users compared to YouTube’s 1 billion. That smaller audience, however, is a boon to rural businesses, as it is focused on people who actively engage with video users rather than simply share content.

Making your videos short and posting them on Vimeo, where you can update them if you make a mistake, unlike on YouTube, will help you stay active with your video marketing. The audience might be smaller, but depending on your audience, it might be the better choice. If you have tried even one of Heather Thomas’s 21 ways to use video, your small business will benefit from posting on Vimeo.

As Thomas points out in the No. 1 spot, you can use video to tell your company story. This is important to businesses that would otherwise be shadowed by larger counterparts. Customers return to small and rural businesses because they get to know the businesses and their owners. In HCA’s case, video shows customers what they’re going to experience. Whitewater rafting isn’t for everyone, but videos like HCA’s can show off both a location and educate customers.

For a jeweler like my mother, whose work is intricate and sometimes tedious, short videos telling of either her inspiration for a piece or a specific technique used are great ways to tell her story. One of her most popular products is a pair of etched copper earrings. Video showing how she creates the designs and the process she uses for the etching will be more engaging for customers than a set of written instructions.

You can also use your digital marketing tools to drive traffic to your retail business through promotions you can video and share via Vimeo. Are you having a sale for the holidays?  Film yourself or an employee showing off your store’s holiday decorations, its location, and some of the sale items.

You don’t have to create a video for every sale or event you have, but sharing your major events regularly shows your audience that you’re not just updating old content, you’re actively creating new content. Being active is one of the top marketing strategies of digital top performers, and it often seems like a no-brainer. However, how often do you see Twitter feeds that are a year old and have less than 10 tweets?

There’s no magic formula for digital marketing, and that’s the beauty of it. You can choose the platforms that play to the strengths of your business, no matter its size or location. Take a look at your product and your audience, and see how these two lesser-known platforms could work for you.

Images provided by the author