Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Getting noticed when you're a small business
A few weeks ago, I was out to dinner with friends (Lake Side Cafe - really good veggie/vegan food, btw) and someone noticed a Conscious Choice magazine with a big article on green weddings. Knowing that a lot of my business is in wedding invitations, she handed a copy to me.
I flipped through the article casually, and found a list of "green" wedding resources, only to discover that although there were lots of local vendors featured, all of the invitation resources listed were online (and out of state). It ticked me off. How much greener can you get than going with a local provider for something, after all? There would be no shipping involved, and by working directly with a local designer, you can more easily direct every choice toward options that have the lowest impact environmentally. Why hadn't they contacted me? Or any of Chicago's invitation designers, for that matter? There are several who can (and do) create eco-friendly invitations.
Cinnamon, my fellow Chicago Craft Mafiosa, encouraged me to write a letter to the editor expressing my views. At the time, I thought "eh, maybe," and resolved to think about it.
The next morning, I was still annoyed. So I turned back to the magazine, read the article, and looked again at the list of resources. Now that I was sure there were no mentions of Chicago invitation vendors, I wrote the letter and emailed it to the magazine's website. Low and behold, a few days later, it appeared on their website, complete with a link to girlmetro.com. (Thanks to Google Alerts, any time my website gets mentioned online, I know about it - if you haven't set up Google Alerts for your business name and website, go do it right now!)
Fast forward two weeks. A journalist calls the studio out of the blue, interested in Girl Metro's eco-friendly stationery options, paper options, and a possible special project. How did she find my company? Reading a letter to the editor on Conscious Choice's website.
Owning and running a small business can take up a lot of your time, and sometimes taking a few minutes to do something extra - like writing a letter to the editor - feels like just one thing too many. That said, getting your business noticed in a positive way is always time well spent. In this case, the time I spent writing that email may lead to a mention (or more) on a well-known website. The regular readers of that site may not know that we have a bunch of eco-friendly options, and this one little mention could bring in new customers, too. Not bad for 10 minutes' work.
posted on 2:45 PM by Richelle