I've joined our sales team on a lot of visits to local businesses in the last couple months, and I've heard two recurrent themes:

1.) People know they should be using the Interwebs to market themselves, but don't know where/how to start.

2.) The state of the retail economy, at least, means that any business discussion goes down smoother with a nice glass of wine.

That's why we've decided to put on an online marketing seminar at Cork on April 28.

I know, I know-- first instinct is probably to assume that this is an excuse for us to get you tipsy and then put an advertising contract in front of you. But I promise that's not the case. I'll be talking about a lot of different things, and I'll certainly use Our Little Business in some of the examples, but we'll mainly be covering things that don't necessarily have anything to do with advertising on our site. We've learned a trick or five over the last couple years, and we want to share.

Topics will include:

• Organic search optimization



• Paid search advertising



• Managing your business' reputation online



• What your website should do for you



• Using email to effectively communicate with customers



• How to move perishable inventory online



• Local and national services that can help you increase sales for free (or cheap)



• Creative ways to use the web to entice people to visit you

The free seminar is limited to the first fifty businesses who RSVP. (Send us an email, including your name, phone number and company name.) We'll run two sessions of twenty-five each so we can keep it fairly intimate and discuss real-world case studies from the group. Meantime, the good folks at Cork will be "educating your glass" with fine wines from their inventory of over 600 vintages and providing nibbles while you socialize with other business owners and marketers.

Be sure to RSVP quickly before we fill up!