Senator Mary Landrieu invited Google to host a “Get Your Business Online” event in Lafayette. She wrote that getting online is essential for businesses of the 21st century. On August 9th, she heard back that Google would be coming to town, hosting the event on Friday, August 24th, 2012 from 8:30am – 3pm at the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Center. Registration is available here.
Google helped provide $132 million of economic activity for Louisiana businesses, website publishers, and non-profits last year alone. They have also helped 275,000 small businesses grow in the online market.
64% of Louisiana’s small businesses do not yet have a website, yet 97% of consumers search the web for local products and services. This event will be focused on helping attendees grow their business by building a free website.
In the morning session “Get Your Business Online,” attendees will learn the basics of how other people search and find their businesses online, including information about SEO and web analytics. This session will also show ways to run businesses more efficiently with online tools, including various applications used for improving collaboration and communication.
The afternoon session, titled “Build a Free Website,” plans to use SiteBuilder to help attendees set up a site. Step by step, business owners will register a domain name, select a website template, and publish their new site.
Mayor Joey Durel added, “As a former small businessman and as the Mayor of Lafayette, I am thrilled to welcome Google to Lafayette for this workshop to benefit our small businesses. Google chose Lafayette as the best place for this workshop in Louisiana for many of the same reasons Lafayette thrives today—our world class technological resources including LUS Fiber, our strong economy, and our great location. We encourage Lafayette businesses to take advantage of this opportunity as a tool to increase the individual web presences of our local companies and Lafayette’s web presence as a community as a whole.”
More information is available at www.LouisianaGetOnline.com.