Derek Naylor is one of the worlds leading Self Storage marketing experts.

He is a regular speaker at most US Trade shows and conferences and consults with the Self Storage industry's biggest players.

He is very experienced in the way Self Storage sites should market themselves, especially on the Internet in today's tough market.

Does social media work?, What are the best ways to market my site?, How do I deal with the discounter down the road?

All this and a whole lot more is answered in his boot camp!

Derek is planning a 2 day "Marketing Boot Camp" for our Australian readers and we will be keeping you up date about his plans to come and visit.

Derek's boot camps are very popular in the US and he will be a regular contributor to our local scene.

If you have a specific issue that you want Derek to address, let us know at sales@centreforceit.com.au and we will get him on the case!

Read Derek's first article Here

Read what others have to say about SMS

THIS years focus at the ISS World Expo in Las Vegas last month was all about Technology

Dallas and Michael travelled over for the show and whilst Dallas hosted the International round table session, Michael assisted the SiteLink sales team at the trade Show.

"The interest in SiteLink is phenomenal" Michael said. "Everyone is hearing at the seminars that web integration is a key part of their business and that is where SiteLink excels" He said. "We were run off our feet!"

We attended specialist seminars on SEO, for web sites, discounting workshops and more.

RK Kliebenstein (Who writes for Centreforce) delivered a fantastic seminar on discounting and how it really hurts your business. He favours concessions rather than discounts to get customers over the line.

We heard how the banks are returning to Self Storage and that confidence is on the rise and 2011 will be a year of facility and rental growth. 

Extra Space with over 800 sites in the US told of its web department with 9 full time employees and 30 contractors, all working on ensuring that their sites are at the top of the search results. They spend over $600 per month per site for SEO.

Over 90% of their business originates on the web and in 2010 had over 2.5 million Web reservations.

A pretty clear message I think.....

After the show we travelled to SiteLinks HQ in Raleigh North Carolina for our 6 monthly development meetings.   

MOST Self Storage owners want to make more Money.

Some understand that its a very different world from when they first started out in the industry.

You can't rely on the Yellow Pages anymore to deliver business to your door and you cant rely on old software to help either.

Markus Hecker, COO of SMD Software this month explains some of the new profit opportunities with Web based software.

Read his story here

WINDOWS XP is now a 10 year old operating System, with 10 year old security and 10 year old features.

Users increasingly want to use all sorts of devices like Tablet PC's and smartphones. XP supports none of this technology and for good reason - It's not secure.

There are plenty of well meaning IT experts that will tell you otherwise - but frankly they do you and your business a disservice.

Why? Well they deny your site the latest in speed security and technology.

New computers that use Windows 7 work sop much faster and better than windows XP ever did. don't be fooled by claims that Windows 7 is full of bugs. Its the most bug free version ever released by Microsoft.

In rare cases you might still need a Windows XP PC if you are running a legacy gate system without Windows 7 support.

We don't sell any Self Storage software or gate systems that do not run on windows 7. After all its the system of the day and has been for 2 years.