On the opening track of his 1977 debut album, Elvis Costello sang, “Welcome to the working week. Oh, I know it don’t thrill you, I hope it don’t kill you.” Back then, there were very few opportunities for creative types to break out of the 9-to-5 grind; Costello himself hung onto his day job as a data-entry clerk until his record company offered to match his salary. 

Today, experts are predicting the demise of the workweek as we have known it and are heralding in a new era: “Welcome to the gig economy.”

A 2014 study conducted by Edelman Berland, a global market-research firm, found that more than one-third of American workers are now freelancers, and that nearly 8 in 10 are making the same or more money than they did at their old jobs. A recent Forbes article reported that half of all millennials would choose increased flexibility over increased pay, and that most plan to leave their companies within three years. Furthermore, a mounting body of scientific research in the fields of psychology, neurology, and organizational behavior has demonstrated the inefficiencies of the continuous eight-hour workday — a holdover from the Industrial Revolution — and even traditional bricks-and-mortar employers are taking note.

These fundamental shifts in how we view work are also physically reshaping our workplaces. Since 2005, when Brad Neuberg organized the country’s first shared open office space in San Francisco, we’ve seen a tremendous proliferation of coworking spaces, maker spaces, business incubators, and other flexible, low-barrier options for the nation’s growing legions of contractors, inventors, and entrepreneurs. And now, this evolution can be witnessed not only in major metropolises, but also in smaller nodes of smart urban growth like downtown Ithaca.

Located above a popular café in the middle of the Ithaca Commons outdoor pedestrian mall, CoLab Hive is a coworking space with a mission to “change the paradigm of the way we live, work, and exchange goods and services with each other here and around the globe.” The facility features permanent and part-time desks available for lease on a monthly or yearly basis, plus a shared conference room, printer, scanner, and projector, and high-speed fiber optic Wi-Fi throughout. With monthly fees starting at $150, CoLab Hive even gives its members credits for massages at an adjoining body work studio.

Anna Coogan, an international touring singer-songwriter, uses CoLab Hive as a part-time office to book her shows. “I love working here for a few reasons. For one, it’s in a super-cool historic building right on the Commons — walking distance from where I live. I can take breaks to get coffee and wander around a little. When I was new to town, it got me out of the house and into a creative place where I could focus and also meet some interesting coworkers. One of the other member companies ended up building my killer website.”

Just a block away, STREAM Collaborative is a shared space specifically geared towards independent design professionals. With both open workstations and a private office available by reservation, the space also offers dedicated pin-up space for illustrations and renderings and access to a library well-stocked with resources for architects, engineers, illustrators, and planners. In addition to their shared workspace, STREAM also includes a 400-square-foot suite with room for up to four full-time workstations. This private suite is adjacent to their main space and allows for workers to furnish and personalize their individual spaces.

Scott Whitham, a planning, project design, and management professional, is a co-founder of STREAM Collaborative. “Working in a colab has changed the professional lives of many of us who have single-person or small-staff businesses. We have the ability to invite clients back to a well-appointed conference room and to share resources that would have been out of the reach of any of us as individuals. The ability for me to use other lab-mates as resources, both formally and informally, has expanded the services I am able to offer my clients. We are separate companies but we function in many ways as a single office.”

Rev Ithaca Startup Works is the third and newest coworking space within the compact, walkable urban core of Ithaca. Unlike CoLab Hive and STREAM, Rev is formally a business incubator, offering entrepreneurs not just shared workspace but also access to expert advice on business development. Members and “graduates” of the incubator may also be eligible for state tax incentives. With support from New York State government, Cornell University, Ithaca College, and Tompkins Cortland Community College, Rev will double in size as the historic building undergoes a $3.5 million renovation. That’s expected to be completed by December 2015.

Tom Schryver, a successful startup founder, chartered financial analyst, and independent consultant, is the current executive director of the Center for Regional Economic Advancement at Cornell. “Rev’s objective is to serve as an epicenter for the entrepreneurial community in Ithaca and beyond. We intentionally sited Rev in the heart of downtown because of the importance of being tightly linked with the downtown business community. Rev members work with nearby law firms, accountants, marketers, and designers. We want to create a virtuous cycle of businesses starting, growing, and staying downtown,” he says.

But what if your entrepreneurial aspirations require more than a desk and a Wi-Fi connection — what if you need access to high-tech and industrial equipment like 3D printers, laser cutters, and radial arm saws? Enter the maker space, like Ithaca Generator in downtown Ithaca’s Press Bay Alley. Ithaca Generator provides these and many more specialized tools to both experienced and novice inventors, artists, and engineers. Members can reserve workshop times or pay a surcharge for 24/7 key-holder status. A 501 (c)(3) nonprofit, it also offers low-cost classes like advanced lego robotics programming and “welding in a day” to underserved populations in the community. 

Xanthe Matychak is a designer and educator working at the intersection of creativity, sustainability, and technology, and serves on the board of Ithaca Generator. “Our suite of traditional and ‘desktop manufacturing’ tools allows almost anyone to come up with an idea and actually make it. We have a democratization of technology that presents us with an opportunity to harness the creativity and intelligence that lives in every corner of our community. We foster diversity of participation and we believe that all of the collaborative workspaces in downtown Ithaca have that aim as well,” Matychak says.

Whether or not the traditional 9-to-5 office is truly headed for extinction as quickly as some are predicting, it’s clear that alternative workplaces like these are not a passing fad, but instead an economic force with which to be reckoned. “It’s a natural evolution,” says Sande Golgart, senior VP, corporate accounts at The Regus Group, one of the largest providers of alternative office space in the world. “It’s a blend of technology and people getting smarter about getting efficient use out of their space. They find it inspiring, they find it more cost-effective, and they find they’re able to be very productive in that environment.”

Gary Ferguson, a seasoned economic-development professional and the executive director of the Downtown Ithaca Alliance, the city’s business-improvement district, would tend to agree. “Downtowns are where innovation and entrepreneurship intersect. Here in downtown Ithaca, we have not only a high concentration of retail, entertainment, dining, and traditional office businesses, but [also] a growing, dynamic sector of alternative workspaces that can take advantage of this density and vibrancy. We are very excited to see this trend continue.”        

Evan D. Williams is the office manager at the Downtown Ithaca Alliance (DIA). He is the day-to-day point person for the DIA and contributes to a variety of research projects. An Ithaca native, he is a graduate of Ithaca College and New York University and has worked and volunteered at a number of downtown organizations. Contact him at info@downtownithaca.com

As a small-business owner or manager, you can probably see the value of showing up on the first page of Google when someone searches for your services. You might even have stumbled upon the benefits and importance of local search-engine optimization (SEO) if you currently have a website. Despite the real value that local SEO provides, it’s still a bit of a mystery to most small-business owners. 

What is local SEO? What do you, as a business owner, need to know about it? Local search competition continues to grow on platforms like Google. About 70 percent of links that search-users click on are organic results, which means they are not paid search ads. In addition, 70 percent of search-users ignore search ads that businesses buy. 

Businesses that can use SEO to get near the top of the search-engine results page can show their available services to interested consumers. This means, at the very least, being on the first page of the search results is imperative, as 75 percent of users aren’t clicking past the first page of search results.

So who really needs SEO? Organic traffic produces 25 percent higher conversion rates (clicks to your website) than traffic driven by equivalent paid-search traffic. Any businesses — from dentists and lawyers to local retail stores — that are interested in growing and generating traffic are a perfect fit for local SEO utilization. As more consumers search online for your products and services, the importance of implementing local SEO in your business plan continues to grow.

Below are some tips and suggestions business owners and marketers can implement to place their business ahead of their competitors online.

Tip #1: Consistent name, address and phone number (NAP)

A number of factors contribute to local SEO success, and citations (or listings) are a major component. Having a consistent name, address, and phone number (NAP) across all your business’ citations is necessary and avoids any mixed signals sent to Google. Creating and managing citations can be a timely process. Tools like Moz Local, however, make it a bit easier to make sure your citations are consistent across the web. The tool even creates listings on sites like Superpages. 

Businesses should also get more specific with their listings by targeting industry-specific resources. For example, if you’re a lawyer, sites like Avvo.com allow you to create a listing and will reference your business or services in the search results for a consumer searching for specific law-related needs.

Tip #2: Ask for positive reviews

Your customers are the best brand ambassadors and because of this, having positive reviews on various outlets is hugely important. Not only is the positivity of those reviews important for branding, but the number of positive reviews is also essential to a business’s success with local SEO. More specifically, reviews on Google Places/Business listings and other resources, such as Yelp, are essential, because negative reviews can be detrimental. Encourage customers and clients to provide great feedback for your business anywhere your company is listed.

Tip #3: Keywords

User experience and the visual appearance of a website are important as consumers want to engage with sites that are easy to use and trustworthy. This, however, is not the only factor that drives traffic to websites — it’s also the content/wording. This year, take a look at your competitors and dig into what kind of keywords they are using in the content throughout their site. Be sure to identify the words and phrases best suited to help Google know exactly what you do, for example, “orthodontist in Syracuse” or “getting braces in Syracuse.” By digging into what your competitors are doing, you can learn about the types of phrases consumers are using to search for businesses.

In addition to looking into competitors, use free tools like Google’s Keyword Planner to help build your strategy. It’s important to identify the keywords that are going to bring the right kind of traffic and build your content around those. Google’s Keyword Planner allows you to download a list of keywords and then filter through the unwanted keywords. Ranking for a few keywords that bring you traffic and conversions is much better than ranking for several that don’t do anything for you.

Implementing this kind of practice quarterly is certainly recommended. Looking at your competitors and doing keyword research keeps your finger on the pulse of your competition and even puts you ahead.

Tip #4: Social media and blogging

Google loves updated original content. Consistently posting new content on your blog is a great way to showcase your expertise in your industry, build relationships, and provide new content for Google to index. When creating original content, be focused, informative, and relevant to your specific industry. The best content helps people solve a problem or answer questions. Not only does blogging benefit you in these ways, but it also gives you something to talk about and share with your social communities.

Creating content isn’t easy. However, it’s important to take the time and research what your customers are seeking. Implementing a blog on your website, and setting up a content calendar that forces a content manager to post multiple times per week, helps ease some of the stress.

Tip #5: Use videos to improve ranking

Much like creating written blog content, your videos are another way to showcase your expertise and create shareable content with your community. It’s important to use videos to solve problems and provide new information. These types of videos can be as simple as filming a whiteboard session or getting an expert in your industry to sit for an interview. While planning for these videos, be sure to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask: what problems and questions might my audience have?

Once you’ve finished your video, and once you have multiple videos to showcase, group your video assets together and create a video resource center that is user friendly. It is important that these videos be readily available to users. Embedding a stream of video players on a single page will not benefit you. Instead, having a separate landing page for each video is ideal. The reason for this is so search engines can locate and index each specific video individually. 

Local SEO is ongoing and must be viewed as a long-term strategy. However, the return on investment that can come from organic search can be immensely beneficial for your business. Whether your company has the resources and talent to handle SEO in-house, or you seek help from a marketing agency that understands how to navigate Google’s algorithm, SEO will help to grow your business in our search-driven world.                

Chris Madden is director of online visibility at Good Monster, a digital marketing agency. Contact him at chris@thegoodmonster.com

You did write a business plan when you started your business, right? If not, you missed a great opportunity to start recording the history of your toil and its rewards. But, it’s not too late to create one.

You might ask, why write a business plan after the horse has left the starting gate? Answer: You want it to keep running and you want it to win. By now, you’re not the only one invested in this race and everyone involved deserves to know the parameters, the direction, and the rules. Whether it’s your family, your staff, your vendors, or your customers, you should have a “big picture” to share with them. Your business plan is the best representation you have of your business and its development.

The three primary reasons for creating a business plan are: 1) To establish a blueprint for the business, incorporating vision, and the reality of the here-and-now; 2) To create a management/measuring tool as you grow your business — you can refer to what you had intended and compare with the progress you have made in order to make informed decisions for the future; and, 3) To meet the requirement for obtaining funding at any stage of the business. The order of these three points is critical.

The employees you bring on board, or the vendors with whom you wish to establish a relationship — how better to acquaint them with your history and vision? The business plan will be an intrinsic segment of your employee orientation. The employee who has an understanding of how the business started, who the target customers are, and the ultimate goal sought, has a better chance of providing the company a loyal image.

The business plan is a living document that you update with every change made to the operation. At all times, this document should be in a presentable format so readers know exactly when and where the business started, its progression and failures, where it stands currently in relation to goals, and how it is operating to attain those goals. It should be informative of the changes in direction necessitated by obstacles encountered. How management has dealt with setbacks speaks loudly to character.

A sound business tactic is to have a 10-second commercial ready to deliver when meeting a potential customer. A step up on this tactic is to have a solid business plan ready to speak in a positive voice about your business. Remember the saying: “To fail to plan is to plan to fail.” You have come too far to let that happen.         

Nancy Ansteth is a New York state-certified business advisor with the Small Business Development Center at Onondaga Community College. Contact her at anstethn@sunyocc.edu or (315) 498-6072.