Listing a small business

Starting a small business is very hard. I thought the hard part was trying to manage all the different things which go along with it. Appears to be a false assumption! I think the hardest part of running a small business (and probably any business) is to find customers who want what you can deliver or even simpler - find customers who will buy from you or use your services.

My brother started a small business - Crisis Solutions. He distributed flyers all around; then he faxed them to businesses he knew would need them. Then we redesigned the flyers and put a small website together as well. The business still works on a word of mouth basis since it is fairly new but we are working hard on some different ideas to scale it.

One of the ideas worth blogging about was getting it listed in the internet directories and yellow pages. This is something which is relatively cheap and what an entrepreneur should do and it doesn't take all that long. Consider - Yelp, Yahoo! Local, Mapquest, Google Maps, Superpages all offer some form of free listing for businesses. Then you should make sure your website is properly keyword-ed and submitted to all the different search engines.

For a business like Crisis Solutions, mail advertising also makes a lot of sense. That's what we will be looking into next...