If You Build It They Will Come!

The latest Rural Entrepreneurship training concentrated on Telling Your Business Story. To create buzz and win over potential customers in my entrepreneurial venture you need to be a master story teller. Tie your story to current food trends in the news. The timing of of the date when promoting a business needs to be thought out carefully.

A good story needs to grab the audiences attention, be concise, compelling, credible, easy to understand, fill an opportunity or need and most important and demonstrate your passion in order to secure investors in your venture.

To promote your business idea, below are some steps that need to be followed:

Develop a smart media strategy

• Know your goals

• Hire a PR Expert 

• Create a website that will work on smartphone
   
• Create a blog - Write a weekly or monthly blog and update it regularly
   
• Link to your site, not wordpress
   
• Focus on your industry 

Network

•  Join trade association
• Attend network events

Embrace all shareable social media platforms when promoting your business

•  Actively promote business
• Create a focus group on facebook
• Tell don't sell your idea
• Advertize on social media
• Tell your personal story
• Use high quality images
• Get media coverage
• Sell to customers
• Recruit employees

Tell your story

• It's not about you, it's about them.
• Focus your attention on who you are speaking to
• Understand and know your audience needs so you can guide them to the conclusion you need them to reach.
• Know what you want - Every pitch has a purpose, pitch with intention.
• You don't have to be entertaining but you have to be interesting.

What makes a story interesting?

• What compelled you to start the company?
• Who are your customers?
• Why do they need you?
• What makes you special?
• What can you give your audience?
• It is important to communicate about what you dream your company can be?

 Who are we?

• Brief description about what you do? 
• Why should you listen?
• Your credibility (for example, Been in this industry for 20 years)
• Need to be credible to rally a team and investors.
• What problem do you solve or have solved?
• How do we make money?
• How do we reach our customers for distribution?
• Is there money to be made?
• What could go wrong? Address risks and solutions.
• What are your investment needs, financial plans and milestones will are you forecasting?

Your local library and the list below are available resources new entrepreneurs.

1. The Entrepreneur.com Startup Kits: Entrepreneur Magazine's website has a gem for entrepreneurs: startup kits. There are kits for everything from starting a restaurant to a consulting firm, complete with articles, guides, marketing tips, and more.
2. eHow's Introduction to Entrepreneurship: Collaborative knowledge resource website eHow has hundreds of thousands of great articles, including a strong set of guides and resources for how to open a business, how to incorporate, raising money, and bookkeeping.
3. About.com Starting a Business Hub: Another resource you should not miss is About.com's Entrepreneurs Hub. They've curated some of their best content for starting a business, including checklists, a small business startup kit, and detailed articles on naming and calculating the cost of your startup.
4. Library of Congress's Entrepreneur's Reference Guide: Yes, the U.S. Library of Congress has an entrepreneur's reference guide, while it's dated (1999), it also lists a lot of great books that are updated yearly. It covers practically every topic related to starting a small business.