| Tallahassee Grapevine: A Unique Way to Educate by Tony Miller |  |
| If you are a business owner, you know how frustrating getting your message out can be. When a potential customer calls you on the phone or steps foot in your office, you have the opportunity to educate them and answer their questions – but what about those potential customers that are unaware of how you can help them with a solution to their problem? Over ten years ago, when customers became aware of a problem, need or a want, they would head to the phone book or go to the vendor’s place of business to find answers. But now, they go to Google and ask their questions there. Statistics show that 70% of buyer’s have already researched their solutions on the internet before they even pick up the phone. The internet is becoming your salesperson. (See My Article on “The Buyer’s Journey” for a more in depth discussion on this topic.) Are you the one giving them answers? ... or are your Competitors? |
| A lot of marketing consultants advise their clients to write blogs and articles to educate their potential customers – they then take these articles and post them on a blog site like Wordpress, or on your own website, or in your monthly newsletter. All of these are great and they are advising you correctly but … |  People are becoming more savvy and are skeptical of typical ads. They all blend together and become white noise. |
| Just how many people find your blog on Wordpress? Wordpress statistics show that 350,000 blogs get posted on their site every day and that they account for 55% of the world’s blogs. That means that over 700,000 blogs get posted on a blog site every day from all over the world – and your blog is mixed in there somewhere. How do you get your potential customers to read your blog or watch your You Tube video? Remember, most blog site visitors are the bloggers themselves and they are all over the world – so what are the odds a local customer is going to stumble upon your article? I mean, it's nice to get advice from a doctor in Topeka - but that doesn't do the doctor much good if I am in Tallahassee. The only way to get local people to read your article is if YOU drive them to it. Sure you can post a link on Facebook and get a few clicks (mostly from your friends) or you can put your article in your monthly newsletter so your current customers can read it (I do recommend this.) |
| You should also educate people on your website. If a potential customer has a problem, whether it is a roof leak or a muscle spasm, you need to be the expert giving them advice or they will move on to another website – specifically what they should be doing before they call you, i.e. “Take 2 Aspirin and call me in the morning.” |  If you are not giving the web surfer the answers, they will find it someplace else |
| So what does Tallahassee Grapevine do that my website doesn’t? We have local traffic. We are now surpassing 100,000 local views a month and our weekly newsletter “Tallahassee (In a Nutshell)” has over 6,100 local subscribers. We also have over 3,100 Facebook fans and 1,100 Twitter Followers. We have a sought-after demographic. Our audience is made up of local people. We did a study of all the IP Addresses that have visited the site and 92% were based out of Leon County, 7% were based out of surrounding counties from Thomasville & Cairo down to Apalachicola. 88% of our readers are family-oriented age 25 to 55. The most popular page is our homepage where people are linked to the featured articles of the week. Our most popular area is the events calendar, which drives a lot of traffic to the Grapevine. We now have the most comprehensive event calendar in Tallahassee. The articles are extremely popular, especially the first week they come out – they are featured in the newsletter and on the homepage where they get the most local traffic. This is the perfect way for you to educate potential customers and establish yourself as an expert in your field. |
| After that first week, our articles get more traffic via search engines, like Google. Google knows that people are searching from Tallahassee, so they want to give them the most relevant content. Since Tallahassee Grapevine is crawled by search engines often, due to the amount of linkbacks out there in cyberspace and the fact we are always adding new content every day. Your article on Tallahassee Grapevine typically ranks higher than similiar articles on a blog site or on a business website. | 
Tallahassee Grapevine gets 10's of 1000's of Traffic through Google searches every month |
| Our articles are not ads. They are educational or entertaining but they are not ads. We have a classified section for that. These are a soft-sell, advice-oriented that allow the readers to get to know you and your business. They give them trusted advice that helps them justify their decision to move forward or not. We help you with the articles! We will help you brainstorm topics, we will coach and consult you on writing your articles – you basically write a rough draft and we are your editorial staff. We do the layout, add the photos, schedule it and publish it for you. We will also assist with keywords for search engine optimization. Whether you are already writing articles and want to broader, local audience – or if you know you should be writing articles but have not started yet – sponsoring the Tallahassee Grapevine is your best option. |
|  Grapevine is the key to the city for many online surfers | You would also be supporting a valuable resource for the Tallahassee community. From promoting cultural events and fundraisers on the calendar and in the articles to our Ultimate Guide to Tallahassee Music to our Groups feature to notifications of upcoming 5K's and youth sports registrations. People depend on the Grapevine to stay involved with this great city. (Right at their fingertips - and we are, and always will be, free for the public.) |
| Tallahassee Grapevine is locally owned and operated. We are a Tallahassee small business that employs 5 people – and we want to grow even more. We are affordable – we really are giving local small businesses the most bang for their buck. If you sponsor as an “Education Campaign” and submit articles every 2 to 3 weeks, that would be 15 to 20 articles a year – you would be in front of potential customers around 600,000 times a year! Call Tony Miller today at (850) 445-6592 to set up an appointment to learn more about this fantastic opportunity. |
