P.E Cobb with Joe Gibbs - 2011 ISS World Expo

The Self Storage Association Spring Conference and Trade Show has come and gone, but we take with us some lasting memories. As always, it’s nice to meet and greet fellow storage aficionados. Networking of course, is vital in any business field and USSelfStorageLocator.com has hopefully attracted some key relationships.

As TRADE SHOWS/CONFERENCES/and EXPOS go, you had the usual: Exhibits, social chat-N-chew/cocktail time, seminars, and guests speakers. The keynote speaker was NASCAR Team owner Joe Gibbs. The former two-time Washington Redskins head coach gave an enlightening ‘pep talk’ to a standing-room crowd that filled a humongous hall – which seemed larger than a football field. The title of the address was appropriately “Building Your Game Plan for Life.” What Gibbs spoke of is useful and can be applied beyond the self storage industry and business as a whole. Gibbs detailed his personal experiences of targeting individuals with solid qualities and abilities. He spoke of molding talent, leading staff personnel, having a group of individuals become team-oriented, to have that team believe in the leader, and to ultimately achieve success. The Christian-principled, Enka, North Carolina-born Gibbs spoke more like an uncle at a family gathering—simply telling stories to all those within earshot; more so than an orator delivering a Les Brown/Tony Robbins-type motivation speech. The crowd of self storage owners, exhibitors, and managers, appeared very attentive of his musings from his past and current NFL and NASCAR triumphs and missteps.

Overall the former gridiron tactician articulated his beliefs of what builds winners. Years of prioritizing his career, as being most important in his life, has taught Gibbs a valuable lesson. The real ‘game of life’ ordained Gibbs to understand that God and Family supersede all else.

At the conclusion of Mr. Gibbs’ speech, there was a question-and-answer session. I posed the question to Mr. Gibbs concerning his greatest failures in life and what were they? He quickly reflected on being absence from so many family photos and video/DVDs. He revealed that he put his career before family as a younger man and advised against those that are on that same path today. He later thanked me for my question, as he exited the hall.

In retrospect, I would guess that Gibbs would probably trade at least one of his three Super Bowl victories to have been more active in the lives of his wife and children.

When Gibbs spoke about family and God, it was as if he no longer were standing before business-minded individuals seeking a golden nugget to grow their businesses. I guess coach was giving us his most valuable ‘play call’ from his Playbook of Life. Take heed to the coaches’ words of wisdom, as we pursue greener pastures in the self storage landscape.

Disney's Contemporary Resort, Lake Buena Vista, FL. | Source

It’s fun and games again for a while as USSelfStorageLocator.com sponsors Casino Night at the Florida Self Storage Association’s Annual Education Conference and Expo. The conference is Florida’s self storage industry premier event. From May 11 – 13, there will be educational seminars, presentations and a night of fundraising.

The FSSA Education Conference will feature a four-hour marketing boot camp designed to intensively help self storage facility owners market their businesses more efficiently. Presented by Derek Naylor, President of Storage Marketing Solutions, it promises to deliver fundamental and critical marketing techniques which will help the average self storage marketer launch their business onto a higher plane.

The various education sessions will be focused on topics such as Positioning Your Self-Storage Operation for Economic Recovery, Driving Traffic, Generating Sales Leads, bankruptcy, tips for measuring effectiveness of online marketing activity, and a legal seminar that will inform attendees about intellectual property rights, liability.

The conference will be as entertaining as it will be educational with the Casino Night Legislative Fund Raiser which will be sponsored by USSelfStorageLocator.com. The game night will include Poker and Black Jack tables, Russian Roulette, and Craps. The proceeds will be going to a good cause and attendees of the conference are encouraged to participate.

The conference promises to be informative and fun, conference participants are guaranteed an event which will leave them with valuable insights for marketing their self storage business and gaining measurable results which will help to improve their overall business.

In the past few years, Facebook has gotten numerous face-lifts. If you’ve been a faithful user from the start, you may remember when you were limited to including “is” at the beginning of every status update or when you could only join if you were affiliated with a school or workplace. Much has changed for Facebook since then and we’d like to give you a few tips on how you can make use of the newest changes which Facebook has heralded in.

The popular social networking website has updated its features giving users ease of access and the ability to take greater control of their profiles and interactions. The recent Facebook changes offer numerous advantages for those who wish to use it to promote a business. Here are some ways in which the change to the fan page can benefit your self-storage business:

Photo Change

The photo feature for fan pages has been modified to resemble ordinary user profiles. Now company fan pages’ most recent pictures are displayed at the top of the profile. The new photo feature can be found at the top of the profile. This means that you can use this space to highlight some of your storage units for example, or any other outstanding photo that you want visitors of your page to see. Ensure that your profile picture and the corresponding photo strip work together. You can use the photo strip in creative ways e.g. tell a story in pictures or use graphics with different works. Keep in mind that you can choose the default thumbnail that you want users to see by editing your profile picture.

Navigation Change

Previously located at the top bar, tabs have been relocated to just under the profile picture to the left of the page. One downside is that this less prominent placement, is that users might easily overlook it. Therefore, if you have a special picture that or information that you want to share about your storage facility, consider posting a wall post instead. The tabs are now fully customizable when you install the iFrame application so you can choose a custom icon for whatever you tab maybe. For example, you can use a smiley face for the ‘Welcome’ tab.

Wall Filters Change

Instead of wall posts being displayed in chronological order, they are now displayed according to the posts with the most interactions (comments or Likes). This means that if there is a particular discussion, for example, a promotion you might be having, it will be continuously displayed (once it has a lot of interactions) in one of the top posts on your page even if newer posts have been made. You can modify this feature by selecting the drop down menu and choose Top Posts or Most Recent.

Admin View Change

Quite possibly one of the biggest changes is that administrators of pages can now log in as the fan page instead of simply interacting through wall post comments. You can utilize this feature to get notifications when people interact with your page and keep a better track of their Likes and comments. This new feature change is located in the upper right hand corner of the profile. You can select Accounts > Use Facebook as page. There is also flexibility in displaying which pages you like. By using Edit page > Featured, you can choose the top five pages that will show up in your Likes.

Keep in mind that these changes were created to help control the prevalence of spam and assist page administrators interacting better with persons who like their fan page. The best way to make these changes work in your favor is to keep the conversation going with the users of your page and post stimulating content that provokes discussion.