I started our website, kesheetmetal.com and this blog, last year with the goal of helping our customers easily find and learn more about our little company. I was also hoping to draw in some new customers and possibly gain a bit of revenue from the sites as well. Here are a few of the lessons I am learning and how the sites are doing as a whole:

I am learning that in the world of web I am not a great community builder, which has hurt each site and my ability to drive traffic accordingly. This is something that I need to work on if I want the website and blog to do well in the future. Creating conversations with a base of people checking and interacting on either Web site is a must if I want them to work.
I wasn't sure if running a blog would be a good or bad idea when I decided to start one for the company. I really enjoy posting, but the time that is needed to write daily and finding interesting things to post can be difficult. The days of fabrication can be long and finding time to write in the evenings can be hard. The goal is to do a better job of writing and keeping interesting posts coming as the blog moves forward. Suggestions on things that may interest you as the reader are always welcome.
Traffic to each of the sites has been low and I attribute that to my lack of community building and getting more involved in social media. I post to twitter a good deal, but I think I need to engage more people daily and get some conversations going with regular followers. I may need to focus more on the Google+ page as well because I have neglected it for the most part.
Revenue for each site has been very low, to the point of not even calling it revenue. Ultimately, as I stated earlier, I would love to have more interaction on the blog and normal customer visits to the main website. The reason being is again to focus and commit to getting involved and engaging people in the HVAC and sheet metal fabrication industry.
I recently started an Adwords campaign to try and drive some traffic to our Amazon tool shop that I setup on kesheetmetal.com. The main focus of the Amazon tool shop was to try and garner enough money to help pay for hosting, running the site etc. Honestly, the Adwords campaign has eaten up any ad budget I may have had and really has been more of a drain than benefit. Although it has driven more traffic to the site. Recently, I have tweaked the ad a few times, but my budget is low and that is not a good thing when running PPC ads on the web. Time will tell if this is something I will continue going forward. Concentrating on community building may be a better use of my time.
Bringing more of my personality and regular life might help to engage more people in the future. Sometimes business and industry only posts and commentary can become stale and boring. Just the right amount of personality may help to gain a better following.

These are just a few of my observations since I built and started my new web venture for the company. Any suggestions on how I can make each site better and more engaging is greatly appreciated. Please comment or find me on twitter.

Have a need for new sheet metal snips, notchers or bending tools. Check out our tool shop at kesheetmetal.com/toolshop

Earlier this year, before summer started I wrote a blog post about how the slower beginning to year was leaving us hopeful for a stronger summer to come. Well, now that summer is officially over and the verdict is in. Summer wasn't so bad, but we had to work harder and be more creative than in years before.

The last few months have been busy for my father and I but we have learned that it is all relative when it comes to our business. The outside work that had kept us alive for years i.e. new construction furnace installations and air conditioning add-on's and installs, have given way to more fabrication and searching for work that might be out of our niche. Because there are only two of us and the amount of fabrication work has increased, we feel busier than most of the other micro businesses in town working in our field. However, the money that is coming in is a bit lighter, is still paying the bills and keeping us functioning as a micro business but the stresses from month to month have increased.

We have had to do more searching and generating more business in different ways than we ever had before. For instance, we need to install gas piping when installing a new or retro-fit gas furnace, but we would not necessarily seek out a specific gas piping job. This year is different and we have taken some of those smaller type jobs to make up for the lack of new furnace and air conditioning installations. All of this has meant more focus on keeping costs in check and making sure that the jobs we take are worth our time and money. When business was booming we never had to worry about cash flows and if another job would be coming down the pike. The work was always there and we became more and more ignorant about running the business the right way.

Since the recession has started and looks to be here again, I have said and will continue to say that I have learned more about business in the last two or three years than in the first ten years of business. Never take for granted the good times because the rough times are always around the corner waiting to rear their ugly head. We as a micro business especially did not pay attention and we payed the price. Luckily, we are still around to learn from our mistakes and the ups and downs of the year are lessons to help us run a better business for ourselves and for our customers.

Visit Our Website at www.kesheetmetal.com