Thanks to the internet, there are now multiple ways for you to promote your self-storage business. The most obvious would be to build a website where you can offer information about your company, products, services, and prices. However, the success of your website depends on its search engine page rank. To be ranked high, you need to augment the website content or promote the site.

How do you promote your website and business online? The best and the cheapest way would be to do it through blogs. Blogs cost next to nothing (some blog hosting sites even offer the facility for no charge). Regular blogging is one way of adding fresh content to your website (if the blog is hosted on your domain). New content attracts search engines, and the more regular your blogging habits, the better your page rank.

Starting Out

Before You Begin Writing Blogs, You Need To Think About The Following:

* Target audience – As the owner of a self-storage business, you have to write keeping in mind potential vendors and customers. You also need to address the industry because this will help you build a network.

* Who writes – Not everyone is born with good writing skills. No matter how good you might be at managing your self storage facility, you may not be cut out for writing. Many managers do not have the time to update their blogs. It would be a good idea to find a professional writer to add content to your blogs on a daily or weekly basis.

* Design and domain name – The name and URL of your blog is important. It affects the recall value of your online brand. The titles of the blogs and domain name need not be the same. In general, avoid long domain names or names with too many special characters. Capital letters and hyphens can be used only if the name looks odd without them, e.g., www.RE-StoreFacility.com. Design is an important element. Dont use loud graphics, and limit the use of Flash. Keep the design professional and dont crowd every kind of information on a single page.

Moving Ahead

* SEO – SEO requires some amount of technical knowledge. If you dont know anything about HTML coding, directory submission, keyword optimization, you might need to hire SEO experts.

* Link building – Reciprocal links with relevant sites with high page rank can boost your page rank as well. Leave comments on other blogs and tagged news sites to get more traffic.

* Allow people to comment and chat with you through blogs. Blogs require some amount of online fame – or notoriety – to move up the search engine ranking ladder. Interactive features can help you build a network and you can use the “comment control” setting for ensuring that your blog remains clean and spam free.

Use these simple steps to create and enhance the features of your self storage blogs. Good luck!

In a consumer driven capitalistic marketplace such as the United States, the average person buys many more products than he or she needs or even realistically store in a typical residential building; therefore, the self storage business has seen an explosion of interest over the last decade. This explosion has been created by a number of factors including the shift of individuals and families to smaller houses, apartment buildings and condos that offer less storage space than typical single family houses, the continuous of a consumer based economy that constantly pressures an individual to buy and consume a never ending series of products, and a counter current trend that says that it is wasteful to throw away items that you no longer use or even need.

The United States economy has always been driven by the production of products. Manufacturers learned early on that if they did not constantly innovate and improve their products, consumers would not see the need to constantly purchase newer products. They would instead rely on the products they already had. Therefore, manufacturers and businesses quickly began issuing newer and improved models of the same products. This process tapped into the average Americans urge to constantly consume products by giving the average American a reason to go out and buy a newer product to replace the older product. Thus, we have families that will buy a new vacuum cleaner because it is a newer series with some different features when they may have a perfectly good vacuum cleaner siting in their hallway closet. The average family in the United States now owns 2.5 vacuums.

Add to this almost sickening compulsion to buy unneeded products is a counter trend that has come to permeate American culture that states that it is wrong to throw away products even if those products have been rendered useless by newer better products. For instance an individual might still have a video game console even though he or she has the newer and better version of that same console. For whatever reason, we seem to want to hold to those things that we have purchased like they are trophies testaments to our ability to buy products that we do not need or even use.

Added to this compulsion to buy and retain items is a phenomenon that has seen a dramatic shift away from the traditional single family home to smaller, more manageable, and more affordable housing options. Thus, we see the construction of huge apartment or condominium complexes. While offering many advantages over single family homes, space is not one of them. There is usually much less available storage space. Closets are smaller, there is usually no garage, and no ability to place storage shed in your backyard.

Thus, the sudden interest in the self storage business can be explained. Like always, people are driven to buy the newest and best product available even if they do not need that product. These people tend to have a very hard time parting from their older obsolete items. At the same time families are moving into smaller, more manageable living spaces. This means that they have less space to store their unused products. Therefore, they rent storage space at self service units, thereby, increasing the demand for such businesses.

Self Storage facilities first appeared in the UK in the 1980s, following on from the success in the USA where it is now a major industry with around 40,000 self storage facilities. It is now apparent that self storage space has become an important asset to the service industry and businesses of all sizes in general.

The two commonly used types of storage are container storage and self storage. Container storage predominantly offers a storage option with limited sized outdoor containers, sometimes stacked and only accessible by prior arrangement with the need of a fork lift truck, often surcharged. Self Storage offers companies and individuals a larger variety of sizes from lockers to large tailor made individual units, or multiple units to meet exact requirements. The units are situated within a larger building offering individual self contained rooms. The larger storage facilities offer a choice of units located on different floors utilising lifts and wide industrial staircases, all with goods handling and distribution equipment such as pallet pump trucks, sack trucks and trollies for ease of access at no extra charge to the individual or business.

Self Storage facilities are usually easily located in heavily populated areas, along major roads and near to retail and business parks. Ideal for business clients as an alternative to owning or leasing expensive industrial units with long leases.

The ideal space maker for businesses, self storage offers businesses the flexibility to manage their own space by swopping between unit sizes as and when required, with the option of short and long term periods of hire via a straight forward license agreement. The individual storage units themselves are lockable and secure with the occupier holding the key. Some self storage facilities offer the option of retaining a key to help with the receiving and despatching of goods on the occupiers behalf. All self storage companies offer extensive security measures such as PIN codes / swipe card entry systems, monitored closed circuit television and police monitored alarm systems, and some even with 24 hour seven days per week security patrols.

As the industry has grown over the years it has developed its own advisory watch dog and governing body, the Self Storage Association United Kingdom. All members of the Self Storage Association have to meet the association’s criteria and use their approved license agreement. With the help of the Self Storage Association and the Financial Services Authority there are now insurance options available for the customers goods whilst in storage.

Self storage can now offer small businesses and individuals a complete safe, secure and flexible storage solution.

There are many reasons why all kinds of businesses needself storage. They range from creating a territory distribution point for a sales team toa mini warehouse to store trade supplies.Let’s examine some of the main benefits and reasons why businessesneed and use self storage.

The benefits of Self Storage for Business:

Costs:

Youpay month to monthwith no yearly leases required.
There is no large bondrequired to rent a storage space.
The rental rate for self storage is competitive with the cost of office space.
Office space is better used to generate income than for storage.
You can pay for periods in advance to receive a discount.
Some storage facilities will offer to assist you to move in your goods for free.
Shelving can be made available (at cost)to make the best use of your storage space.
A free receipt and dispatch service means you don’t need to employ someone to receive deliveries.

Security:

24 hour security gives you peace of mind.
Offsite storage protects your valuable documents in case of fire.
Yourent yourown individual lock up space and you keep the keys.

Convenience:

7 day extended hour access to your storage provides great convenience.
Drive up roller door spaces makes using storage easy and saves time.
Having a forklift on site means you can receive pallet deliveries easily.
Pallet jacks and trolley’s make moving your goods around effortless.
Some storage facilities have use of a freeserviced office for meetings.
Any packaging materials you may need to ship your goods are available on site.
Document destruction can be arranged for your stored archives.

Flexibility:

You can store month to month withvery short notice required to vacate.
As your business changes you can alter the amount of storage space you need.
Downsizing and up-scaling are easy with Self Storage.

What are the main business uses for self storage?

Archive storage
Sales team sample and product storage
Point of sale equipment storage
Office relocation furniture storage
Trade business storage such as plumbers, builders, plasters
Storage of imported and exported goods
Small business stock overflow storage
Seasonal demand such as Christmas stock storage
Government self storage needs
Pharmaceutical samples and sales material storage
Mobile business equipment storage

Home office storage

Self Storage offers great opportunities for small and big business alike to save money and increase productivity. SelfStorageoffers secure, convenient and flexible storage solutions that free up businesses to do what they do best.

If you have a specific business storage need that is different from those listedabove we would like to hear it or if you wouldlike to provide feedback on the articlethen please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Cash is King for all businesses. For entrepreneurs its just essential to manage your cash as you nurse your embryonic business.

Do you really need to buy or lease premises for your business to succeed? Too many entrepreneurs buy or commit to long-term leases too early in the life of their business. Suddenly they have a massive monthly overhead without the sales to support the cost. Invariably you will have had to commit to more space than you initially need, literally wasting money on dead space. Add in rates, insurance, utility costs and maintenance and you could be having some uncomfortable meetings with your bank manager.

Consider the case for self storage in your business plan. You rent just the amount of space that you need, increasing or decreasing this space to reflect the needs of your business. For example anyone who deals with stock will experience daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal fluctuations in the amount of space they require. In most UK self storage facilities the space you rent can fluctuate to accommodate the demands of your business. You just pay for the space you require and have no additional costs for rates, insurance, utilities and maintenance. In addition your goods will be protected with state of the art security, CCTV and sophisticated fire detection systems all giving you peace of mind. You will also save an enormous amount of time by not having to search for the perfect premises to buy or lease.

Some self storage companies will accept deliveries on your behalf. A few even have forklift trucks with trained staff, who can unload large deliveries of pallets for you. This saves you the cost of hiring your own staff and equipment, but more importantly releases your time. Its so easy for entrepreneurs to find their valuable time being wasted on unproductive activities. Its just crucial to avoid this, and to carefully invest your time on the highest value creating activities. Plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen can order the stock they need for jobs, get it delivered to their self storage centre and then collect it at their convenience. They invest their time profitably serving their customers, rather than earning nothing while they wait for a delivery. Retailers, manufacturers, importers, ebayers and just about any entrepreneur who receives deliveries can transform their productivity with this service.

Many entrepreneurs start their businesses working from home. What seems like a great idea at the time, can result in rising tension on the domestic front. Stock, tools and equipment take up a bit too much space, and tempers become frayed. Feedback increases as harmony decreases. Some customers are just about dragged in by the ear accompanied by a partner with a sense of humour bypass. Self storage leaps to the rescue and domestic harmony is quickly restored.

Self storage doesnt just have hard business benefits it can restore your work life balance too! Most importantly by being careful with your cash in the early days of your entrepreneurial life you dramatically increase your chances of success.