global trade

Making Your Web Presence Both Local and Global

Julie Rains — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:36:03 +0000

Link:

http://www.openforum.com/articles/making-your-web-presence-both-local-and-global

The local flavor of your business is a selling point but you would like to grow your customer base without abandoning area ties or compromising your heritage. Just as offline activities can enrich your digital presence, distinctly local roots can complement your global aura.

Appearing both local and global allows your business to:

Deepen the connection to locals among both existing customers and prospects;
Establish and reinforce brand positioning;
Serve as a destination for tourists or those visiting the area for professional or personal reasons;
Generate sales of merchandise, services packaged as products, and professional services.

I have discovered that there are common themes among local businesses with websites that successfully combine worldly sophistication with down-to-earth accessibility. Here are the best of their approaches that serve local and global audiences equally well:

Go Deeper Locally

Emphasize your localness to enhance your global appeal. That is, explain how your geography, historical roots, area customs, and local customer base have shaped your business. Giving context to your business model demonstrates its global orientation.

So, although it may seem counterintuitive, showcasing your localness in order to promote a global perspective can make your business appealing to those outside of your immediate area. Use these techniques for illuminating your world-class personality:

Physical location: Show where in the world you are using Google Maps or similar mapping tools, and give directions to your storefront, office, or whatever site represents your physical presence.
Staff: Tell customers about your employees, especially those with whom customers are likely to encounter while doing business with your company. Staff profiles can be formal by listing experience, education, and expertise, or entertaining by relating leisure activities, fun facts such as the most compelling reason they work for your company, and favorite products that your business sells.
Image gallery: Illustrate how customers interact with your business.
Calendar: Let people know about special events in which your business participates or ones you host or sponsor so that they can connect with you or staff members in person and understand what community issues are important to your business.
History: Tell your business back story and a brief history of the local area, highlighting details that are relevant to your current operations.
Local vendors: List local vendors to convey commitment to quality sources and sustainability, and further differentiate your business.
Media coverage: Mention media coverage and awards to relate the areas in which your business excels.

Embed Global Happenings Into Your Local Offerings

Showing your awareness of world events expands your business’s reach and appeal. Specifically, taking action to address a global issue emphasizes that you understand how your day-to-day decisions affect people everywhere. But you don’t have to focus solely on weighty issues such as hunger, disease, and strife; observe national and world happenings such as new product releases, country celebrations, and national day/week/month events.

Consider these ways to give a local face to global happenings:

Community involvement: Promote your local involvement with an issue of global concern, ideally one with a natural connection to your organization. Start a local initiative or get involved with an established program.
Best practices: Adapt traditions and practices in another region to your local area.
Appearances: Appear in person or arrange for a representative to connect with existing or prospective customers, media representatives, or vendors at local, regional, nationwide and global events. List these appearances on your calendar.
Special events: Host special events with tie-ins to national or world celebrations.

Offer Resources that are Useful and Entertaining to a Global Audience.

Improve the quality of your customers’ lives in some way through online resources that entertain and educate. At the same time, these resources should broaden your audience, providing more opportunities to generate sales.

Add content in one or all of these formats to help customers and showcase your expertise:

Videos: Demonstrate techniques and answer common questions on certain topics;
Reviews: Review products to give insights on selected products as well as the perspectives and preferences of staff members who routinely advise customers;
Blog posts and podcasts: Deliver information and commentary on topics that may include industry news, common dilemmas, and responses to individual questions;
Catalog: Sell merchandise and digitally-packaged products such as e-books, webinars, or access to premium content.

Having a local plus a global mindset is useful in articulating what differentiates your business from local competitors and companies worldwide, elevating your worth in the eyes of customers. Plus, your unique understanding of global practices and local traditions is valuable in helping nearly anyone in the world to do business with your company, quickly, easily, effectively, and profitably.

This article is from Julie Rains of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Nonfat dry milk--no longer a frugal alternative

Philip Brewer — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:07:56 +0000

For more than thirty years, nonfat dry milk was a frugal staple. For things like baking and making yogurt, it was as good as fresh milk. Not many people wanted to drink the stuff, but a whole generation of frugal folks knew you could use it as an extender--make up a quart of nonfat dry milk and mix it with a gallon of fresh milk. (See Myscha's Powdered Milk Solutions for Dairy Lovers for other good ways to use nonfat dry milk.)

Since late summer last year, though, nonfat dry milk has been priced more like a gourmet specialty item than as the frugal alternative it used to be.

To put it in context, food prices overall are up 4.5%, dairy and "related products" are up 13.1%, but nonfat dry milk is up 104%! At that price, it's literally as cheap to use fresh milk as it is to use dry. (Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Brian Gould, UW Madison.)

What happened? The market for nonfat dry milk is a global one. Just lately we've had one of those perfect storms of supply and demand changes that commodities markets see from time to time.

The major exporters of nonfat dry milk are the United States, the European Union, and Australia. Here are some of the recent shifts that have impacted the price of nonfat dry milk:

For the past five years, Australia has suffered a severe drought. It has cut Australian milk production by 20%; this year's production is down by a billion liters.
Over the past two years, the EU has been cutting farm subsidies in a way that encourages the production of cheese over nonfat dry milk, and has also ended all dairy export subsidies.
A July heat wave in California killed large amounts of dairy cattle--and California produces over half of the US's nonfat dry milk. Milk production in the US has only in the past couple of months climbed back to year-ago levels.
The weak US dollar has made US nonfat dry milk cheaper overseas, leading to higher US exports.
There's been strong US demand for milk proteins and strong world-wide demand for cheese. Meeting this demand has consumed milk that might otherwise have gone to making nonfat dry milk powder.

All that has added up to the recent spike in price for nonfat dry milk.

Having given all that attention to the market, I ought to also mention an important non-market force: government dairy subsidies. The change in the EU subsidy for nonfat dry milk is just one example. All these programs have complex effects on prices for dairy products. For example, in the US there's a support price of $0.80 per pound for nonfat dry milk. At current prices, that's not going to affect supplies, but in any market that has the kind of pervasive price support structures that the dairy market has, one has to be careful when analyzing sources of price shifts.

With US production returning to normal, I think we'll see nonfat dry milk prices begin to moderate, but as long as the US dollar remains weak and the drought in Australia continues, export demand will keep the price higher than its historical average.

(Thanks to Professor Bob Cropp at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the lowdown on recent nonfat dry milk price shifts.)

This article is from Philip Brewer of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Recession Depression

Andrea Karim — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:26:37 +0000

Yesterday's market "correction" had a lot of investors experiencing acute arm pain as they clutched their chests, watching the Dow Jones average plummet over 200 points in the course of about 2 seconds. The swiftness of the drop was attributed to a computer glitch, which isn't exactly reassuring, either from a technological standpoint (how did that happen???!?!) or a practical one (it still dropped over 500 points, right?). The Shanghai index correction was the obvious impetus for the drop, and that makes me feel even worse.

I don't have much dough invested in the stock markets, save for a paltry sum that fluctuates in my IRA, so I wasn't as concerned about the drop as say, my dad, whose entire 401k is directly affected by market swings.

Despite this, I was definitely clutching my chest when I heard that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan predicted a recession for the US economy. Some economists have been predicting a recession for a while, based on the housing slowdown/slump or other indicators that most of us don't think about much. Other economists with actual jobs have predicted that a full-blown recession is not, in fact, likely, but it certainly got me thinking: how does one prepare for the possibility of a recession?

There's lots of info out there on how to survive a recession as an investor, but what about us regular Joes who are simply worried that we won't have a job should the economy turn southward?

Well, there are some articles and books on the subject. Some bloggers are giving it some serious thought and have their own ideas on the subject. Forums are filled with helpful (and not-so-helpful) tidbits. Paul Kirvan penned some advice back in 1991 regarding this exact topic, when it may have been even more relevant than today.

Here are some ideas that I am exploring:

Start your own business. Be prepared to start working on a consultant or freelance basis if you lose your permanent job, and get some great tax write-offs in the meantime.
Look around your workplace and find ways to make yourself more useful. Job security is when no one else can do everything that you are doing.
Know ahead of time if you qualify for unemployment. If you don't, look into that emergency savings account that you've been meaning to get started for the past 6 years.
Take the classes that you need to take now. Make sure to include the costs of continuing education when you file taxes. You can probably make a shift in your career with relative ease if you pick up a few new skills or take a risk and try out a new field altogether.
Develop a love of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Get a roommate (shudder).
Join the Compact. Not sure if I WANT to do this, but I might have to at this rate.
Budget. Budget. Budget.
Chose a hobby that will actually promote your career. Volunteer for a professional society or nonprofit organization that corresponds to your work. Life shouldn't be all about work, but these are great networking opportunities, should you ever need them.

How about you guys? Are eBay careers the way to go? Do you have any ideas for recession prep besides what we normally tout to our readers (Save, Budget, Buy Used, Library Card, etc.)?

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: