Retail shops on Main Streets all across rural America are playing musical chairs, with some shops closing due to tough times while others see opportunities to start their own businesses. In ‘Small Shops Slump, Soar in Region’s Downtowns’ you can read about the trials and tribulations of shopkeepers in small town Delaware, Ohio:
“Although at odds on the surface, those developments could well be a sign of the tough times.
Turnover, not uncommon on small-town Main Streets across Ohio, always increases when the economy slows, said Jeff Siegler, director of revitalization for Heritage Ohio, a preservation group.
At the same time, loyalty to local retailers increases. That might, in turn, boost the confidence of new business owners and lead to growth of the sort Marysville is experiencing.
“In times of crisis, people really rally around their communities,” Siegler said.”
The article also discusses a recent study that concluded that locally owned retailers in more rural areas, where there is less competition and often more loyalty to existing shops, might be better-positioned to survive these tough times than metropolitan areas.
Downtown Delaware is also seeing a change in ‘who’ is leasing downtown space. Retailers and niche businesses are replacing service and professional businesses like law or medical offices that are moving, or closing.
With all the talk these days about social networking, have you started to wonder if anyone - besides you - is still using email?
If reaching high numbers of people is your goal, then social networks and blogs are a better choice than individual emails. They are more efficient for group communication.
In a recent survey by Neilsen discussed by the E-Commerce Times, business owners are showing an increasing fondness for networking over one-to-one correspondence. The Neilsen survey did NOT include using email for business purposes, which is apparently still very much preferred for work related communication.
“The statistics are hardly surprising, Jonathan Stark of Jonathan Stark Consulting told the E-Commerce Times. “Email was the killer app for the ’90s — it brought the Internet out of the geek realm to the grandma realm.”
In the 2000s, social networking is picking up where email left off, he said. Surprisingly, though, there are still large pockets of Internet users who have not embraced the social networking trend.
“I know people in tech even that still resist taking the plunge — they think it is a time waster when, in fact, it is the opposite,” Stark observed.
Indeed, one of the reasons for the medium’s popularity is its efficiency in communication. “It is more efficient than sending out emails, which basically a one-to-one form of communication,” noted Stark.”
Nielsen also found that the biggest increase in users of social networking and blogging communities was among 35-49 year olds. And use of mobile technology is gaining ground fast, and has nearly doubled since last year. Two-thirds of everyone online is visiting social networking communities, Nielsen said.
How do you compare to these statistics?
What do you use email for, and how much email do you use in your business?
How often do you send out email newsletters to your customers?
How many blogs and online communities do you visit daily or weekly?
Are you ahead of the curve or behind it?
And does it matter to you?
