Getting Your Business Found Online When A Local Search Is Performed

In October 2012 alone, U.S. Internet users conducted 17.6 billion direct search engine queries. What is playing a significant role in businesses being found is that  most of the search queries being performed on Google have a local intent. Getting your business listed on the major search engine results page (SERP) is more critical than it has ever been and will be even more critical tomorrow. To ensure potential customers can find you online, it’s necessary to optimize pages like your website, business blog, local directory listings, social media pages, content sites, and more to appear in search.

This infographic explains the anatomy of a Search Engine Results Page (SERP).  Also check out the helpful links below to more relevant information.

Here are some more helpful topics:

• 3 SEO Tips Every Multi-location Business Needs to Know
• Why Fresh Content is More Important than Ever for SEO
• Google Study: SEO Plus Search Advertising Equals More Clicks
• The Web Presence Optimization Tips Experts Swear By
• Optimizing Google+ Local Pages: A Quick Introductory Guide

Do you have any questions about the search engine results page? If so, feel free to connect with me, call or email!

Resourses

-ReachLocal Blog

Managing Multiple Facebook Pages?

This App is great!  I have been using it for a few weeks now and have yet to find a feature I don’t like!

• Manage multiple pages
• Upload photos to pages right from phone
• Status Updates from phone
• Interact with posts, likes and shares

Content Marketing…Do you have it in your budget Charlotte NC businesses?

Marketing used to be about paying for your audience’s attention and trying to lure them away from whatever they were doing. But thanks to the web, the game has expanded. Inbound marketing encompasses a number of tactics that attract customers by offering them useful, relevant information.

This infographic explores how widely inbound marketing has caught on and how businesses are finding success with it in 2012. The statistics show that small to medium-sized businesses are spreading more of their marketing budgets across inbound marketing tactics than large businesses and corporations:

Key Statistics:

• The Social Media Marketing Industry size has grown from $716 Million in 2009 to a projected $3.1 Billion in 2014.
• 58% of internet users spend 6 hours on social media alone.
• 34% of internet users spend more than 11 hours per week on social media.
• 54% of companies are increasing their marketing budgets this year due to past success with inbound marketing in 2011.

 

Small to medium-sized businesses conduct marketing this way due to the personalized awareness they are seeking in their client base, which is important for growth and brand recognition. It is because of this intense focus on inbound marketing and the results it can generate that the social media marketing industry is growing at 34 percent Compound Annual Growth Rate.

Using inbound marketing, we can zero on customers who are eager to buy what you sell.

 

Your Online Brand…What happens in an Internet Minute!

This week I would like to discuss branding with all of you listening in Charlotte, NC, Digitization and social media has affected the way we must monitor our brand online. A brand is simply how your business is perceived by your customers. It is your company’s ethos or personality. It is what makes you different and hopefully better than your competition.

The idea of branding has always remained the same; however, digitization has forced marketers to study how and where consumers interact online in order to best monitor and represent your brand:

Key Digitization Statistics:

·         In the United States, 3 percent of the population used tablets or e-readers in 2010, but we’re projected to jump to 8 percent by next year.

·         15 to 20 percent of people in developed countries will have adopted tablets or e-readers by 2015.

·         25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.·         34% of bloggers post personal opinions about prod

ucts & brands.

Presenting your brand online in today’s environment is important if you want to tell your next generation of customers about your business. ReachCast’s main purpose is to get you involved in the whole social online world so that we can best spread positive
messaging and sharable content to control your online brand effectively.

Online Reputation Management Information Graphic

Since 2007, Online Reputation has become a paramount focus for American businesses. The digitization of this standard “word-of-mouth” referral began forcing executives to devote resources, and create large budgets, in order to maintain their online reputation and digital brand.

The following infographic is from the PEW Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project about the pro-active monitoring, tracking and management of the search engine results for brand–related keyword phrases:

Key Takeaways:

·         More than 80% of men will consider buying a different product if they find negative information about a company in an online search.

·         47% of American companies’ net worth is tied up in intangible assets like brand equity and reputation.

·         60% of executives believe that risk reputation should be addressed by a communications professional.

·         Less than 15% of American business owners are able to effectively monitor their own SERM, according to the 2011 BIA/Kelsey study.

The goal of Search Engine Reputation Management is not just to monitor for online reviews. The real benefit of SERM is to effectively “own” the search engine results page for your brand-related keyword sets by controlling as much of the top 10 results as possible.

This shields your brand’s reputation from negative, misleading, inaccurate or otherwise damaging content from search engine results.

This is why we do what we do…give me a call to learn how we do this leveraging our “Radar” technology.  980-721-2130

So you are creating the content…Now what are you doing with it?

It is evidently clear that a website is no longer enough to generate leads. Putting more content, in more places,  gets you more leads,  which in turn effectively boosts revenue and active client numbers – ultimately giving you a greater return on investment.

According to recent studies conducted by Invkoe Solutions, 41 percent of Internet users trust the information published on Facebook. If you are asking why you should care what people think on Facebook, consider the following infographic:

Key Takeaways:

·         People spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

·         Each Facebook user spends on average 15 hours and 33 minutes a month on the site

·         More than 250 million people access Facebook through their mobile devices

·         More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook

With over 30 billion pieces of content being shared on Facebook every month, it is important that your business has a piece of that digital pie. ReachCast populates to multiple main social networking sites.  We develop sharable custom content so your brand can flourish, all while driving that social traffic back to a site you own which increases your search engine discoverability.  We also monitor for mentions of you online and let you know when it happens so you can get involved.

This is why we do what we do…

Great Article from Jason Keath at @SocialFresh! 4 Pillars of LinkedIn Marketing

I know I use LinkedIn to propect and learn more about a company or person before picking up the phone and just calling.  Jason describes some good practice on using Linkin groups that I have seen even my husband use very successfully as a financial banking recruiter.  The LinkedIn Answers though I had not taken the time consider before, however is a great way to involved in conversations that are happening in reference to your industry.  Great read.  SocialFresh will be spending some more time exploring the different social media platforms as they have started in the end of 2011 throughout 2012! Looking forward to it!

4 Pillars Of LinkedIn Marketing For Businesses by Jason Keath on 01.01.2012

With more than 134 million members, LinkedIn has changed the way employees and employers connect – and how professionals and businesses find partners.

Anyone building a business (online or offline) should take a close look at how this powerful network can work for their business.

LinkedIn is a very simple platform. People, in large majority, use the site for job searching. And because of this most LinkedIn users are not active as often as those on Facebook or Twitter. However, there are niche opportunities that many businesses can take advantage of and should make sure they are considering.

Here are the 4 cornerstones to using LinkedIn for your marketing. Make sure you are not missing out on an opportunity.

1. LinkedIn Groups

This is the favorite LinkedIn activity amongst heavy users, yet while savvy businesses recognize that creating a LinkedIn group gives you the ability to generate (hundreds and thousands of) leads, they understand this is only the first step on the long journey to success.

When creating a group on LinkedIn for business purposes, your goal is to create a group that holds value for the audience first. A few tips:

1. Look for a niche topic in your industry. Look at pain points that your customers have a lot or growth areas of your business and focus there.
2. Name the group for the niche and not for your business name. This helps search and helps guide the group toward audience value and not the business goals.
3. Make the group open so that it can grow more easily.
4. Promote the group to your existing channels.
5. Target existing brand champions and passionate fans and ask them to stop in once a week to help promote discussions.
6. Have a plan for maintaining activity in the LinkedIn group. How often will you or other employees promote discussions? What messages are allowed and how often will you moderate group posts?
7. Use the best discussions and reoccurring questions as inspiration for blog posts and new products/services.

2. LinkedIn Answers

Similar to Yahoo Answers, this professional network has a Q&A section, available for users to post (niche-related) questions to their network, inviting connections and other users to answer. LinkedIn answers is the largest professional based Q&A site out there. Recent trendy Q&A site Quora is another good direction for this type of networking, but LinkedIn certainly still has some street cred when it comes to business networking.

When you take advantage of this option and actively participate inside on a weekly or daily basis, you start to naturally build your credibility by connecting with new professionals and top experts in your industry. Some tips for using LinkedIn Answers.

1. Have a schedule and interact regularly, either weekly or daily
2. Pick a handful of topics to focus on and become a heavy hitter in these sections of the site
3. Provide overly useful answers, pointing to many resources. The more helpful you are the more attention you will get from potential business partners and customers.
4. If you are acting as a company, use multiple people to support each other in discussion in a show of force. There is not need to game the system and just comment with “attaboys” and “I agree”. But having multiple employees with smart helpful discussion can only help your cause.
5. Make sure you don’t go into sell mode and overwhelm other users by pushing your product constantly or aggressively.
6. Again, look for opportunities to reuse your answers and discussions as blog posts to keep the thought leadership going.

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3. LinkedIn Events

This is a fantastic way to engage with your clients and leads online, or offline. Here you can post your events, with a short compelling description about each, and a link to the registration page.

Towards the end of 2011, LinkedIn overhauled their events application and made it much more use friendly and much more useful to businesses. Attendees to events can connect more easily with one another. And event search is better making it easier for you to get your event in front of new eyeballs.

A few LinkedIn Event tips:

1. Use events for more occasions. If you have a sale on your product coming up for black friday, make an event people
2. Fill out everything, including: Full and descriptive event title, avatar, short powerful description, times, location, and registration link.
3. Link the event to your LinkedIn company page
4. Direct all potential attendees to click on the “I’m Attending”. Each time someone is added, it gives you more chances to show in their timeline and for their friends to be influenced to find out more about your event.
5. Setup the event early in the your planning process to get all volunteers, speakers, partners, participants active as “attending” to make the event look as popular as possible.
6. Promote your event through LinkedIn Groups
7. Promote your event through LinkedIn Ads

4. LinkedIn Advertising

Imagine how it would feel like to be able to tap into specific audiences like for example 1.3M small business owners, 12M small business professionals or 2M C-Level execs, and have total control over your advertising budget, by only paying when someone clicks or views your ad.

LinkedIn calculates a quality score for your ads, similar to Google AdWords, but only uses your all-time CTR (click through rate) and your bid. LinkedIn ads have far fewer options than Google or Facebook ads but can still be a great performer.

Your text-ad will appear at the top, right under LinkedIn navigational menu, and/or on the right sidebar with your logo, next to it.

A few tips for LinkedIn ads:

1.  Your headline will be 25 characters in length while your description 75, meaning what you say should be concise & compelling.
2. Target, target, target. Just as with Facebook ads, targeting your audience is one of the most important aspects of your ad, as well as one of the largest benefits. Use the filters available.
3. You can advertise LinkedIn groups, events, company pages, and profiles. As well as outside URLS.
4. Split testing is easy with LinkedIn Ads so setup groups of ads to test performance on your copy, your targeting, and your images. Your minimum daily spend on LinkedIn Ads is only $10 so it is very affordable to test.
5. Social networking ads see user fatigue often. Pay attention to performance declining. You may have to change out your ad creative weekly to maintain performance.

LinkedIn claims to have a more affluent and attractive user base than Forbes, Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek. There is value in this network. Leverage these 4 techniques

The Buying Cycle & How it Relates To Your Marketing

Most are familiar with the basic buying cycle of a customer. Awareness phase followed by consideration & buying phase and then hopefully the recommend phase.

I always make a concerted effort to explore the buying cycle in reference to marketing and advertising with each of my clients. My goal is to discover the true timeline and behavior that occurs during each phase. Most of my clients admit they have never taken the time to think this through.   Most discover that they did not give most mediums enough time to be effective given a good image and consistency was already in place.  They quit half way through the buying cycle and did not continue to market to their potential or existing clients through the entire buying cycle. The leading factor has been a lack of marketing budget allocated.

Not having the budget or budgeting the right amount  leads to picking or choosing forms of marketing or advertising to focus efforts. This often leads to a low or NO ROI because you are marketing only to a group of potential customers in one of the phases combined with not commiting to a long enough campaign within the medium of choice. If  your budget only allows you to choose one or two mediums make sure you are using a medium that gets you in front of consumers in the buying and recommend phase first and commit to the time period it takes your customers to buy and refer you to a friend. This is the time someone decides to buy your type of product or service to the time they actually buy and then refer you (on average). Most of the time you need to commit for a minimum of 6 months. Keeping in mind consistency of brand and you measure it often and make changes based on results.   Here are some examples of those types of buying and recommend phase marketing mediums:

• PPC  Google, Yahoo, Bing and AOL Pay-Per-Click is the fastest way to get page one.
• SEO (Takes minimum 6 months)  Black hat tricks don’t work long term
• Remarketing-How much traffic do you have coming to your website already?  Lets stay in front of them!
• Online Directories-Make sure these are complete and you have taken ownership of them
• Craigslist-Keep your ads current and consistent with your brand
• Yellowpages (Do not let them handle your internet marketing even if its “included” or “free”)
• Social media-Are you there?  Are you positioning yourself as an expert? Quit selling all the time!
• Review sites-What are people saying about you? Ask for them!
• Email Marketing-Make sure it has good reporting, its consistent with your brand and has good unique content

So let’s discuss this further using an example.  If your kitchen sink is clogged and you have done everything you know to do and it is still clogged, a plumber is what you need.  Who are the top two plumbers in your area that come to mind?  Now, do you get in your car and hope you find their billboard on a near by street? Do you turn on the TV and hope a plumber placed an ad? Do you turn on the radio while searching for the billboard and hope a fancy jingle comes across the air waves?  The answer is NO!  In the past you would have turned to the local phonebook. Today you grab your cell phone or laptop and search for it online.

So, back to the example: In my mind Dan King and Mr. Rooter come to mind immediately if I think “plumber charlotte”… They are the Pepsie and Coke of the plumbing industry because of branding. To become the Pepsie and Coke of your industry can be very expensive because  the length of time you need to commit to this type of marketing can be lengthy.  The goal of this type of marketing and advertising is to influence behavior in the buying phase.  You are banking on the fact that when I sit down in front of my search engine of choice via my computer or phone I type in your name specifically or if I do a broad search like “plumber charlotte” I will be more likely to click you because I am familiar with you already and I have a good perceived value of your company.    Think about it, how often do you need a plumber?  Knock on wood, I have never had to call a plumber but I would guess every three-five years maybe would be my guess.  Therefore, it may take at least three-five years of advertising and marketing to influence my behavior during the buying phase in the event I need a plumber.  This type of marketing has been proven to be effective if done properly and can increase the results you get placing buying cycle type marketing and advertising.  However, do you have the budget? What time frame would this be for your potential customers?

Types of Awareness Advertising & Marketing

• Television-get a fancy jingle
• Billboard-be consistent with your look and stay in the same location minimum 3 months
• Radio-get a fancy jingle
• Internet Display-make it animated and compelling
• Newspaper-same place each time for at least 3 months & include an offer
• Sponsorships-little league teams etc, the weather, school closings etc.
• Vehicle Wrapping-which is a moving billboard
• Pay-Per-Click(PPC)-Impressions based not clicks.
• Social Media-Paid Impressions Based and original content
• Email Marketing-original content
• Direct Mail-you are only as good as your offer
• Review Sites

This exercise has been a tremendous learning experience for my clients and frankly speaking some still don’t get it completely.  Some simply understand to focus their dollars on the buying phase, they get measurable results and an ROI but don’t reinvest into expanding their marketing efforts into the recommend, consideration, or awareness phase.    I encourage you to discover the timeline of the entire buying cycle your clients go through and learn about their behaviors during the buying cycle.

Sony Playstation Network Hacked? No Way! Online Marketing Strategy with specific goal? Yes Way!

Everyone keeps asking the biIlion dollar question.  When will Playstation Network be back up and running? I  Have no doubt this was intentional! The Playstation Network will be back up and running when they are done!  I am a prestiged twice Call of Duty Black OPS, Socom 4  gamer also known as babycakesninja on the Sony PSN! With todays technology they absolutely could have had this fixed by now….I predict we pay to play in the near future.  The PR announcement will go a lil’ somethin like this “in an effort to provide a safe environment for our users and protect the integrity of our network PSN acknowledges this great responsibilty and with great responsibility comes great cost, yada yada yada.   This is an online marketing strategy that has now been picked up by the offline media as well ( I could go on about why they are so quick to be “included”, but I will save that for another discussion). 

This is Social media at its finest combined with a user behavioral study with a clear defined measurable goal!   Oh I get so excited about this stuff!  I’m impressed! I think its great! Not only has Sony Playstation Network determined how many times each user tried to login until they gave up, they have also been able to take a good look at their emergency broadcast system in order to determine the “communication tool of choice” of their subscribers; support phone number, link, blog, live chat, email, smartphone app, or social network .  How many different games each of us gamers popped in to analyse our problem solving skills for future gaming skill levels (okay maybe fetching a little)  however…. they do now have a more accurate view of my library of games and at minimum my favorite top three in order. PSN now dominates the Google organic SERP(search engine results page)( Hahaha, ISJ) for their name and “indirectly” for their most relevant search terms.  I like to call it shelf space, they call it market share with a measurable ROI!  They have not only acquired a massive amount of online shelf space, but they are also being picked up on large media networks such as ABC,FOX,& CNN (I did not hyperlink CNN’s article because the picture they posted was that of a wired controller and as a gamer I was little offended by their inability to paint an accurate picture, no one uses wired controllers CNN, and the TV in the background was way too small and not even a flat screen… the 80’s called and they want their polaroid back!)

Some major shelf space online and offline has me thinking (x-who360) at least for the moment my top-of-mind awareness is with SONY Playstation.  Not to mention their comments per update is on the low end 12,000 and well over 20,000 on the highend on the Playstation Official Facebook Fan Page which has brought me much entertainment recently.  So needless to say it is spreading virally like the common cold.   I wonder how this has impacted site visits to Facebook overall? There are 12,921,224 PSN Facebook fans as of right now 11:00 PM EST, logging in every half hour, to check the status?  Do the math!  Would be interesting to know the number!

Google loves Twitter and Facebook fan pages with authority and with this kind of traffic, shares, likes, and comments  I would say JOB WELL DONE!! Those are my thoughts, what do you think?! Someone post a facebook survey “How much will PSN charge for their membership?” $4.95, $19.99, $14.95, or $29.99 a year, a month?  Will their be different memberships levels based on ranks? Or could your rank buy you prestige membership? Oh what a cash cow this could be.  Makes the competition to presitige over and over again look like childs play.  Are you willing to Pay to Play?  I know this gamer is!

Facebook Prospecting and Networking with the recent Facebook Fan Page Upgrade.

With the new Facebook Upgrade recently I have come up with multiple ways to help my clients.   However, if you are not providing unique and interesting infromation on your wall consider some content ideas, things that will influence shares, likes, and comments.  Position yourself as a expert in your field not someone who is always asking your fans to come do business with you.  It’s completly exceptable to talk about off topic items such as the weather, the season, what people think of something randon, etc.  This is fun and people will respond.  People don’t respond to an oil change sale every other day. 

1. The Like Button-Growing your fan base should always be the priority because this is the easiest way to communicate with your fans, vendors, etc. Now, as an Official Fan Page you can go out and “like” things. The first thing I have been telling my clients to start liking is all of your neighbors if you are retail or have an office. They have fans that can become fans and they can become a  fan which is like an endorsment from a neighbor.

2.   Once you have “liked” another fan page (because you cannot “Friend” people using a Fan page)  you can  post on their wall.  So an example of that would be if you were a collision center you could go and “like” insurance agencies who could send you collision repair business and post to their wall that you offer all their clients a “free tow truck” to your location.  If the business does not want you to post to their wall, they can delete it and just don’t do it again.  Becarful with this and respectful.  A better approach is to join conversations that are relevant to your industry.  Don’t start conversations not relevant to the wall you are posting on. 

3. Watch your news feed.  This is where you will be able to see what all the walls you have liked are talking about & doing.  These are opportunities to get involved in conversations, events and more.  It gives you content to discuss and share on your wall!  If you share their information chances are they will start sharing some of your information.