Leslie Carothers Helps Me Stand

I’ve been reading Leslie Carothers’ columns in Furniture Today encouraging her readers to get involved in “social networking.”

She writes in her latest column:

CEO of MAJOR mfg. when asked what surprised him most at market, “How many of my dealers are down 30% and don’t have the faintest idea of what to do about it.”

I emailed her and said, Leslie, I hear your plea re  CEO of Major Manufacturer says…

I am "linked in".  I don’t see the value of this site.  What am I missing?  As far as "twitter", why do I want my day interrupted because you just stopped by a booth (and are writing me about it) or now you’re in line for a sandwich.  Again, what am I missing?

She writes “I know for a fact-not a theory-that social networking, online reputation management  strategies and careful data mining of your website’s analytics-properly and carefully thought through and deployed-can get you out of this mess, but I need you to work with me.”

Call me and let me drill down with you and set up a comprehensive social networking strategy for your company for 2009. You can reach me at leslie@tkpartnership.com or 713.705.2482.  Let’s work together to make our industry stronger.

So I did.  I called Leslie and said, “We have a furniture store, what’s next?”

The first thing she did was look at our website.  She told me that my links to our vendors was not helping our traffic.  Google was merely treating our site as a portal.  To prove it she said, “Google, Sherrill Portland.”  I did and Landfair Furniture was right there at the top.  “Now.” she said, “Google traditional sofa Portland Oregon.”  We were not on the 1st, 2nd or third page at all.  So unless a customer knew a specific manufacturer that we sold, they wouldn’t have known that we existed.

The solution is link to the vendors in such a way that the catalog comes up and everything in the catalog counts as content on the Landfair Furniture web site.  “So how do I fix it?“  She referred me to a web designer, Sev Ritchie at AYR1.com, who specializes in webs sites for 1,500 retail stores.  I called Sev and signed a contract.  Leslie told me that it takes a while for Google to spider the site.  I should be prepared to handle the phone and email queries in a timely manner.

Leslie, also, had me Google Mattress Houston.  The first entry is “Local business results for Mattress near Houston, TX”.  A list “A” through “J” came up and most had reviews after their name.  In this case Gallery Furniture Store had 39 reviews.  Leslie told me that a shopper looking for a mattress could check the reviews and immediately decide if Gallery was reputable.  I didn’t even realize reviews like this were out there.  Wouldn’t you also want to know if there were negative reviews out there?  You could be losing business because of bad reviews and not even know why.

Bev and I thought we just needed a web site, and I thought our blog was driving traffic to our store site.  We attempted several upgrades with artists who knew their way around designing web sites to make the site more relevant.  I decided we needed to take the next step to be professional, if we wanted to stay in business.  Leslie will be my liaison with Sev Ritchie, and now we have two professionals working for us.  

Evaluate your website.  If you are not getting the results you want give Leslie Carothers a call.

Thoughts?  Email me at landfair3554@comcast.net or leave a comment.