photo by: gribley
The inspiration for this post came when I saw a lady distributing Yellow Pages books from her van. Made me think about the last time I used Yellow Pages; the actual printed book. It occurred to me that the last time I used it was before I had high-speed internet. I got my high-speed internet in early 2000. For the past ten years I’ve been getting my information from online sources. If I want to find a phone number, I go online. If I want a restaurant recommendation, I go online. If I want to know the closest car wash to me, I go online. And most of my blog readers, friends, and colleagues do the same. But surprisingly, majority of small businesses are not online. They only exist in the offline world.
I completely understand that not all small businesses need a full website, need to be on every social network, or provide status updates regularly. I understand that economics may not work, expertise may not be there, and time commitment to figure out how internet works may be non-existent. But please have some kind of presence so that I could find you, call you, and recommend you. There are enough tools and sites such as Yelp and Google’s Local Business Center and that allow you to claim your small business listing, update your information, and interact with your customers with ease. But most importantly, it leads to greater understanding the type of impact having even a greater online presence may have on your small business and your bottom line.
