Happy New Year to all Las Vegas businesses and here’s to your continued success in 2010!

A new year is also a great time to step back from your Las Vegas business and assess all of your current online and offline marketing materials. Have you added products and services? Is it time to refresh your brochure, business cards or logos? Is your website up to date?

This is a great time to readjust things that might not have worked for your business in 2009. Consider polishing your corporate identity and developing new marketing materials. Consider advertising online to promote your website. Consider building partnerships with companies that offer complimentary products and services.

This is a good time to commit yourself to getting out into the Las Vegas community and meeting other business professionals in Las Vegas. You’ll have the time to hear about other companies and businesses and perhaps learn from what they are doing and what has worked for them. It’s also an opportunity to promote your own businesses products and services.

Any way you look at it, you should take the time this week to write down 10 new marketing and business goals and execute one each month of the new year! 2010 should become your year to grow!

Facebook has fast become a major social networking website for meeting other business professionals in Las Vegas and it is also quickly becoming an essential marketing tool to help market your Las Vegas business or company. If you don’t already have a personal page, create a facebook page right now. Once you create your facebook profile page, be sure to add a fan page for your business.

Reasons Why You Need a Facebook Fan Page:

1. It’s 100% Free – in these times, this is an invaluable and no-cost way to market your business products and services.
2. PR – You can publish articles, links to your blog/s, website or any interesting or helpful articles to your fan page that can help you communicate with people in your network and your fans and help keep your business in their mindshare.
3. Fan page is public – this means that major search engines such as google, bing, and yahoo! can index the page and your page can come up in their search results.
4. Personalized URL – upon reaching 100 fans, you can register for your own custom facebook URL (i.e. www.facebook.com/yourcompanyname)
5. Viral Marketing – when you post content to your fan page, it’s automatically added to the pages of all the fans that follow your fan page.
6. Applications – you can choose from dozens and dozens of apps that can help interact with your fans including photo galleries, polls, RSS feeds from your blog or presentations.

This post is just for fun.  I love the Vintner Grill in Summerlin. True, it’s close to my office, but even if it were far away, I’d try to make it there periodically for the excellent food and outstanding cocktails. It’s also a great place to meet other Summerlin Business professionals.

About Vintner Grill

Vintner Grill is a lively American Bistro nestled in West Las Vegas in the neighborhood of Summerlin. The bistro’s compelling architecture combined with the simplicity of the modern decor gives the dining experience a casual elegance. The focal point for the dynamic outdoor patio is two large canopies in an illuminated setting with custom-made couches and drapery. Created by Executive Chef Matthew Silverman, the menu features American dishes with Mediterranean influences from Spain, France, and Italy. Signature dishes include the lamb osso bucco, white bean hummus, and veal London broil. Decadent dessert selections are provided exclusively by chocolatier Vosges Haut-Chocolat, a luxury chocolate experience not to be missed. Visit their website at www.vglasvegas.com.

Some of my favorite menu items:

• white bean hummus with olive relish and spicy pita chips10 pan seared crab cakes with taragon cream, roasted peppers and mache
• sweet butter lettuce salad with warm brie, wild herbs and orange-balsamic vinagrette
• heirloom tomato salad with fresh mozarella, aged balsamic and micro-arugula10
• any of the wood-fired flatbreads

As a marketing professional, I’m often asked for recommendations on if business professionals should have a professional headshot – I say absolutely yes!

I work closely with my photography partner here in Las Vegas, Wayne Wallace Photography. Wayne is a highly-respected and widely-know professional and artistic photographer here in town.  He is very versatile and can photograph anything you can see. I recommend him for your corporate headshot needs (he’s done all of mine).

About Wayne Wallace

Wayne Wallace is a professional photographer and visual artist who enjoys and thrives on challenge. He approaches each project whether personal or commissioned with passion and intensity and strives to excell and push the creative boundaries of his craft with each new assignment.

Wayne studied photography and graphic design in high school before furthering his education at the Art Institute and the Hallmark Institute of Photography. Wayne is a visual communicator who draws inspiration from the world around him; he finds inspiration in art, music, great words, people, and nature.

Wayne’s unique eye for composition, technical expertise, passion, creativity, abandon of rules and can’t do attitudes, as well as his ability manage complex productions make him a perfect candidate for you next creative project. Wayne is especially good with people, putting them at ease in front of the camera, evoking the necessary emotions, and capturing their true essence.

Wayne’s extensive experience in graphic design, programming and his mastery of digital tools such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator give him the ability to deliver images that work.

Be sure to visit Wayne Wallace’s photography blog!

When you launch your new business here in Las Vegas, one of the first things you often think is “how can I make my business profitable?”  There are many strategies and tactics you can take for your company and one key strategy is business networking.

Business networking is something that may not impact your profit margins directly, however when you examine the way business networking works, you’ll probably find networking contributing directly to setting up the fundamentals of your business.

Here’s how Business Networking can help your business:

• It allows you to build a brand image for your company or business, even before your company launches. If you have a strong professional network of business people, it can help you in circulating the name of your company amongst your fellow business contacts, and you can ask them to promote you to your business contacts as well.

• Visibility will help you gain more clients. Whether you are a new business owner or have been in Las Vegas for awhile, you always want new clients. Networking allows you to get a good stream of your clients coming your way. Of course, a lot of this also depends on the professional reach of the members with whom you have been networking.

• Allows sharing of best practices. As a new company, you may not realize the value of best practices. In the long run, when you implement best practices your business will no doubt gain a lot of credibility with your clients in the long run. 

• Helps you to overcome challenges. Many companies and businesses face challenges, and networking with fellow business people can help you learn from each other – both in how to do things and how NOT to do things.
   
• Keeps your business in people’s minds. If you make an active attempt at networking in Las Vegas, and keep an interest in your fellow business professionals, then you and your company will be remembered. And keeping in contact with people will keep you in their mindshare for years to come.

Networking often is a qualitative exercise. It does not matter if you network with 100 business people or ten, just as long as as you get out there in the community and network.