Well, I'm on to a second issue! Several of you have let me know that they enjoyed the information in my first issue, and I've even gotten a few suggestions for future articles (thank you!).

No doubt as you're reading this, you're either in the midst of Thanksgiving preparations (yum!), or maybe this email didn't hit your inbox until after the turkey was carved. In either case, I hope your Thanksgiving is/was a good one with lots of food, family and fun.

Even with the economy as it is, we as a nation have a lot to be thankful for. Thanks to the men and women in our armed services who protect us and our way of life. Thanks to the friends and family that support us in our lives and our work. And thanks to all the people who bring us work to keep us in business and doing what we love!

It's kind of a shame that we only set aside one day a year to remember all the reasons we have to be grateful. Even so, take a moment to count your blessings. You'll be all the happier for it!

Michael

We know that with the state of our current economy, EVERYONE is looking for ways to cut back and save a few dollars. For both ourselves and our customers, this sometimes means sacrificing the perks of taking our business to local merchants and instead going to cheaper "big-box" stores. Yes, they are cheaper, but they are also cold, impersonal, and quite frankly, lower-quality in many cases.

Our customers can only see that they have to count their pennies in order to make ends meet. As a business person, we also have to look at the bottom line. We have a business to run, and we have to keep our expenses as low as possible, without sacrificing the quality our customers have come to expect from us. In either case, it's a hard, and sometimes frustrating tightrope walk.

Also as business people, we realize that the bottom line is not always the whole story. Sometimes spending just a little more "smart money" pays greater dividends. We're aware that by putting our own money into other local businesses, we're helping our local economy, which helps our customers to have more to spend on their necessities. And if we can convince our customers that spending that little extra locally pays dividends to them also, our "smart money" comes back to us, with interest. Then, if we re-invest this "smart money", it creates a self-perpetuating cycle that keeps reinforcing itself.

Now, I realize that I'm preaching to the choir. As business people, we know the advantages of supporting our local businesses. But in order to make this work, it's important that our customers also understand.

I've recently come across two different organizations that help us in educating our clientel to the advantages of spending their hard earned money locally:

The 3/50 Project
http://www.the350project.net

The 3/60 Project's idea is very simple: Select 3 local businesses to patronize. Then divert $50.00 a month that you would normally spend at a "big box" store and spend it at these businesses instead. In practice, it doesn't cost the customer anything; they are still receiving the goods and services they need. But the benefits are great. Not only are they helping to keep a local merchant in business, but they are helping to stimulate the local economy, plus they get real, old-fashioned "service" they aren't used to seeing at the big stores.

The 3/50 Project is the idea of a Chicago local marketer and blogger Cinda Baxter in response to a series of economic news events in 2009. You can read more about Cinda and the 3/50 Project and the blog that started all this.

The website offers a lot of FREE promotional materials you can have printed up or just make copies to hand out to your customers. There are badges to add to your website, Facebook page or blog linking back to the site. The site will even create a link back to your business website or blog for participating (be sure you read the information carefully - not a "gotcha", but there is a strict process).

Small Business Saturday
http://www.smallbusinesssaturday.com/

Every retailer knows about "Black Friday" - that annual, uh, "festival" of consumer chaos that kicks off the Holiday shopping season. Then came "Cyber Monday", the monday after Black Friday designed as the time to shop online retailers to order all things you didn't manage to find (or missed out on) in your Black Friday expeditions.

American Express' OPEN business unit is promoting "Small Business Saturday" - the day after Black Friday where shoppers are encouraged to visit their local merchants for holiday shopping, and the merchants are encouraged to create specials to entice those shoppers into their establishments.

The Second Annual Small Business Saturday is November 26, 2011 (yes, this weekend), and although it's probably too late now to promote your business, there's always next year (November 24th, 2012, if I'm looking at the calendar right). Be sure to put it on your "reminder" calendar about September, so you'll have plenty of time to plan accordingly.

The Small Business Saturday website has a lot of great marketing materials for in-store signage and e-marketing, with a heavy emphasis on the social networking services like Facebook and Twitter.

Education, Education, Education

The upshot of both of these organizations is education. As local businesses, it is up to us to educate local consumers to the real cost of buying "cheap"; that it may help them with their bottom line in the short term, but in the long run, local businesses actually give them more value for the money they spend by giving better quality, service and supporting their local economy!

Oh, and don't forget that means our businesses, too, need to support each other! What products or services does your business use that you might be able to purchase locally?

In the last newsletter, I listed several ideas that I found for holiday marketing. One that I found rather clever was the idea of creating mini-cookbooks of holiday recipes (in case you don't know me, I love to cook... and eat).

I started playing around with the idea of single, double-sided page folded into a booklet. I came up with two different designs, one side-folded and the other top folded. If you'd like to see instructions and layouts for either of these designs, they're available on the Guy Friday website. As a bonus, you can also download a PDF file of a Christmas mini-cookbook I threw together, just as an idea of what you might do with this. Have fun!

Do you have an idea for an article for the Guy Friday Newsletter? Please let me know. If you have questions, or would like to see me address some aspect of web design or the Internet, there are others that probably have the same questions or concerns. Please let me know, and I'll try to address it in a future issue.