I have been working with my brother-in-law to really escalate the operations of his small business Thinwrench [1], which offers custom wrench and tool manufacturing [2]. He has had the business since the 1990's and has had the site since I believe 2001.

The
site gets a fair amount of traffic and it generates a small trickle of
orders for him though out the year, but nothing really significant. It
is impressive though considering he does next to nothing to maintain or
evolve the site, it's content, and online presence.

So we are
always trying to get together and breathe some life into it. He is a
real smart guy who has almost zero time to put into his business
outside his day job. This is definitely a common problem for aspiring
entrepreneurs.

So I have launched a new BETA version of his small business web site using the same look, but hoping to give him a new set of content management (CMS) tools [3]to assist him in making his site maintenance and syndication easier.

My goal with the new small business online operations plan is to give a simple framework to:

• Maintain his simple, easy to use small business web site [4].
• Plan and implement a traditional and online marketing campaign for his small business [5].
• Plan and implement a social media marketing campaign for his small business [6].

So I put together a basic outline that lays out the plan for:

• Writing
  home page, about us, and contact us content for use on his web site as
  well as throughout his online marketing and social media marketing
  efforts.
• Develop a list of initial products he will offer through his small business web site.
• Develop a list of initial services his business will offer through his small business web site.
• Establish a basic keyword marketing strategy to use as a framework when marketing his site and writing content.

Once his site is up with the new content we will start laying out:

• Marketing Plan Outline
• Online Marketing Plan Outline
• Social Media Marketing Plan Outline
• Advertising Plan Outline

We
will keep each plan and strategy simple and realistic and easy to
implement. My goal is for him to be successful and not get overwhelmed
with strategy and execution and never get anywhere.

He probably
has 4-8 hours a week maximum to spend on his web site maintenance,
content creation, marketing, advertising, and overall online presence.
That isn't much.

He has to execute in the 1st round so he has a
deep understanding of how the site maintenance, marketing, social media
marketing and advertising process works before he can delegate to
anyone else. This is critical as the owner of a small business.

So
keeping it simple and obtainable, and employing an agile process for
executing, evaluating and planning for changes every week is crucial.

I will keep posting on his progress, challenges and successes.