Attention small business owners who think social networking is silly: knock it off. We know you’re just afraid, or confused, but you can’t hide behind those excuses any longer. With the recent announcements of Bing and Twitter integration, and Google’s Social Search, your business can’t hide any longer. Those angry tweets about your poor quality that you ignore? Yep, those are appearing in searches right next to your latest press-release. Photos of your day-old looking food you served up are not only on Flickr, but now they’re in any searches people may perform who are friends with those folks. Bottom line: you’re bad service and poor products are going to be exposed faster, to a wider audience, and with lasting impact. So get involved; interact with your customers, make them feel welcome, make them feel something. Have a great product? Good. Lots of people are no doubt talking about it. Let them know you’re listening. Encourage them to make those – Read the full article
We’re moving beyond the tradition of consulting the yellow pages. With 80 percent of people turning to search engines to find local information, Google last week launched its Local Listing Ads service, which makes fixed-fee advertising placements available in Google’s local search results as well as in Google Maps. The new service demonstrates once again how the Internet – and Google in particular – is changing how local business listings are done – and searched. Available initially in San Diego and San Fransisco in limited beta, Local Listing Ads is different from Google AdWords in that it requires no creative or keyword management and no bidding. The monthly fee is flat, determined by Google with the goal of ensuring that businesses’ ads are seen by the highest number of people looking for relevant local information. Business owners who purchase the ad select the location and business category to ensure local targeting, and from there, Google takes care of the creating – Read the full article
LinkedIn isn’t just for individuals looking to power their career and build their professional network. It’s also for companies and business organizations looking to establish and promote their professional identity. Creating a LinkedIn company profile page will go a long way in letting people know what your business is all about. First of all, you can use it as an opportunity to build an online reputation for your company. When created and managed strategically, it can also be a great branding tool. A LinkedIn company profile, moreover, is friendly to search engines: it’s public and can show up in search results, giving you an extra edge in exposure and helping your business attract potential new customers or employees. Create your company profile now on LinkedIn. The instructions are simple and easy to follow. We have even included a short Youtube video on how to create your profile. Below are a few tips to help you maximize the Linkedin company profile – Read the full article
The keywords people search for the most on search engines in your niche or industry are not always the most profitable keywords to focus on for your business. This is at the heart of Chris Anderson’s concept of ”the Long Tail” from his groundbreaking 2004 Wired article and his book of the same title released in 2006. The Long Tail was originally meant to discuss an emerging trend where online retailers like Amazon, Netflix & Rhapsody found success increasing the depth of their inventory and selling less of more in an internet driven environment but it has had implications far beyond its initial insight. Nowhere was this more apparent than with Search Engine Marketing. Understanding “the long tail” and applying strategies to leverage it for SEO has proven time and again over the last few years to be one of the highest value activities in search marketing. To many this is not something new, but it is surely worth revisiting. – Read the full article
LinkedIn is not Facebook. It’s not Twitter, either. You don’t use LinkedIn to post 140-character statuses about your business or to officially like someone’s new online video. What you can do, however, is use LinkedIn to grow your small business and make it more profitable. And isn’t that your priority? As a business-oriented social networking site with more than 50 million registered users spanning 170 industries, LinkedIn is an online real estate for professionals big and small. It is truly a business networking site with the average user having $109K in income and 41 years old. If you’re unsure how to use your LinkedIn profile to gain a business advantage, you can follow these tips below: Brand your profile: As a small business professional, you want to be easily found by the people who matter – as well as by the most frequently used search engines. Make sure that you customize your LinkedIn profile by changing the default link into – Read the full article
When I come across articles like the one posted on TheStreet.com last week, I can’t help but get excited. Titled “Business Owners Question Social Networking” the article quotes some research that finds that a majority of small business owners haven’t seen value from social media, and that most don’t even use it themselves. A key section of the article reads: Among the 500 small-business executives surveyed, 76% said social networking hasn’t help them generate leads or expand their companies in the past year. And 86% said they don’t turn to these Web sites for business advice or other information. The majority, 61%, depend on big search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, for business advice and information. Only 13% use social networking sites and only 10% rely on expert blogs. So why on earth would I be excited that small businesses don’t use social media and haven’t seen value from it yet? Opportunity. Plain and simple. For me, there is – Read the full article
The only trick to this is being able to find exactly what you want quickly, without being sent to some stupid website that has nothing to do with what you are really looking for. Online shoppers will tend to back to websites they have visited bef…
In-the-know consumers can find just about anything today on the worldwide web. The only trick to this is being able to find exactly what you want quickly, without being sent to some stupid website that has nothing to do with what you are really looki…
