I feel the top reason for being active is to monitor customer satisfaction or support. Nothing is worse than a customer who had a bad experience that was internet savvy. They can spread the bad word over hundreds of places in a mere day. If you are not following this, you have no way to respond and/or make it right. If you do make it right you now look like a caring business that provides incredible support. This will go a long way to market your services or product without even trying.

Next is simply lead generation. 80% of all people that buy locally research on the Internet first. Do you want a chance to get them into your store? Of course you do and being active can only enhance your chances of being found. Many people search the social sites for reviews of products and services and go with those that have the most positive and active review sections.

Want to know what your competition is doing? Want to know when your main competitor is having a sale? An easy way to monitor your competition is to follow them online. If they are socially active they will have most of their lead generating techniques out for you to see. You can counteract any specials or sales that may drive people away from your store.

As a business owner you need to build trust and credibility with your customer base. An easy way to do this is by being active on social sites. They will get to know you and like you. This in turn builds up loyalty and can help in getting them to buy from you in the future. If they are loyal and truly believe in you they will then promote you to many other followers. This in turn drives more people to your store.

I want to do business with places that I know will be around a while. Nothing is worse than buying something and having the store go out of business. No service or support. One of the ways to show you will be around is by actively participating in the new wave. We all know this is becoming an Internet world and if a business doesn’t get this I feel they won’t be around. If they aren’t going to be around I look elsewhere to purchase. I am sure this is a normal activity amongst shoppers. Find a business that understands the Internet and social business and you have a business that will be around a while.

This is not an all inclusive list, however, it does give you some very solid reasons to use social media.  If you don’t want to be left behind then I would get going as fast as possible! How do you get started? The best way is to hire someone who understands this medium to handle it for you. There are many social media managers around (including myself) that can do it on a part time basis for you until it is necessary to hire someone on staff. Tell them your mission, vision, and values and they can get you on your way!

Good Luck and Prosperity to you all!

If you look at the top four categories of website design, e mail marketing, new social media, and website optimization, you realize they work with each other. You design your website, its content, and search optimization around driving more qualified customers to your website. Once there your goal is to get them to opt in to your e mail list so that you may market to them for a long time. Once you build up a large list you are no longer at the mercy of traditional advertising to drive people into your storefront.

I also find it interesting that businesses stopped doing most things advertising related in 2009 and now are jumping head first in 2010. This tells me that businesses feel that the economy is turning around and an opportunity exists. Those businesses who start the earliest will have the most “bang for their buck” as some companies are behind the eight ball.

As more lead generation shifts to the internet the ability to track and change campaigns make it very attractive. For instance if you depend on yellow pages you get one attempt and if it fails you are stuck for the year. Most traditional forms of advertising are also hard to track and judge effectiveness. The internet gives you the ability to see what campaign is working in real time, adjust that campaign overnight, and test against other campaigns to see which is most effective.

Have a look at the e marketer article below and start thinking about how to use this information to your advantage. If you would like to talk with someone about it feel free to call or e mail me through the contact page.

Marketers Put More Lead Gen Budgets Online – eMarketer

First and foremost you must get my contact information. I belong to several of those garden clubs but that is not what I mean. Those can be difficult and long to fill out so something more simple. I am always a fan of giving away a gift as a raffle. Just need your name, address, and e mail address. To be part of the drawing you must confirm the e mail we sent you. You could even advertise this on your receipt that prints out. So what do we do with this information? Read on.

The first action to take is sending a postcard to the new client. That postcard will have a coupon inviting them back in and also telling them to confirm their e mail address for the raffle at the end of the month. This gets them used to looking at your e mails and also may bring them back for an item they forgot. As many touches as possible right now to form that bond.

Next send them the e mail for confirmation in the e mail club and for the monthly drawing. At this time you also want to give them something of great value so that they feel wanted. It is another way to develop your business relationship. Also explain to them you will only send helpful information and EVERY email will have a coupon. This will get them to open all e mails that come. Consistently e mail them so they get the rhythm of your contact and they will plan to buy things around receiving your e mails.  A pre conditioned prospect!

If you do this small but simple plan you can get rid of a lot of marketing expense. Yeah but this will cost a lot of money! No, it doesn’t really! Postcards can be sent out for 33 cents including postage. Your e mail campaign can be set up for under 50 dollars a month. Both are semi automated so you really don’t need to hire someone new. In fact hire a consultant to do this for couple of hundred a month and not even have to fuss with it all.

The beauty of this program is in its simplicity to start and maintain for little cost. If you have 15 people come into your store a day and you can get 10 forms filled out you have added 300 potential clients a month. 3,600 people the first year and 10,000 over three years. How would you like to have a client base of 10,000 to mail to? This will allow you to significantly cut back on advertising and save money thus increasing profits. This also allows you to build up loyalty and friendships which help a business become successful. If you need to add subscribers then you have the power to contact other business owners to swap e mail lists! That is for another day!

Everyplace we stopped we didn’t know what was there or where to find restaurants, hotels, or any places of interest. The simplest way to find places was to look up via mobile phone the different places. Research has proven that most local shoppers research their information online before buying locally. Although the mobile phone is still a minority of online researching it is gaining a lot of steam.

“There has also been a doubling in usage of mobile shopping, according to PriceGrabber.com’s “Smartphone Shopping Behavior” survey. In April 2010, 35% of US Web-enabled mobile phone owners said they had participated in some form of mobile shopping in the past year, such as browsing or researching but not necessarily purchasing products.” emarketer.com June 3rd, 2010.

Now is the time to get your business prepared for the future of mobile shopping. This will be more and more important for you to get a leg up on the competition. After all everyone now has a mobile phone and many are now switching to web enabled phones. Don’t be saying in 3 years…. wish I had set up for the mobile phone search.

Obviously the researcher is looking for places, next to them, to purchase. By optimizing local maps you can be at the top of the listing and of course in the discussion. Most researchers will list 4 or 5 stores that are near them and the directions. If it is a very large purchase they may drive to each store to get the feel of the store. None of this will happen if you aren’t near the top.

The next piece of information they want is getting the specs on what they are buying. If it is a large furniture set for their living room they will then look up furniture (city). This is obviously the keywords you want to be targeting for your website and of course your local listing. You have total control over what you want to advertise for on the web by getting an optimization expert involved to find this out and make the appropriate changes.

Another function of the internet good or bad is the availability of prices online. Most shoppers also want to find out how much each store is going to charge for the item they are purchasing. By doing an online analysis of each competitor an seo expert will tell you how you stack up against the competition. Sometimes you can’t sell on price so you need to sell on other factors.

Finally the savvy internet shopper will look for reviews. Not just testimonials but also reviews by independent sites online. Local listings, yelp, and insider pages and you tube can all have reviews of your business. There are actually a lot of sites but that is why you need an expert to help you claim them all. You can then have your greatest fans give positive reviews at these sites which helps when researchers are looking. You also need to know when a negative review is posted so that you can either respond showing you care or make it right with the reviewer so they may change their mind. Once again it is about controlling information about your business on the web.

As you can see there is a lot more to optimizing a business for the web. It is not about just getting the top ranking in organic results anymore. It is also about getting your word out to the researchers so they can make informed decisions. The key to that though is making sure you control the word that gets out, not someone who knows very little about your business and it’s philosophies.

Keyword research can cover a lot of different areas so we are going to narrow down this keyword research to just organic seo campaigns. By organic we mean what searchers would look for when trying to find a business in Google. We then are going to break that into three more areas that we will cover in this article. The first step is looking at the raw data. Then we will look at the sites that are in Google already. Finally we will put it all together by making some hard decisions on what to use.

How do we find the data involved in keyword research. There are many tools you can use but the fastest and easiest is the Google adwords keyword tool. Most people will tell you to go for the largest phrase and optimize your site for that keyword. This is actually not what you want to do if you want to rank for your local business. You are actually looking for “buyer phrases” not high search volume phrases. As a small business you want to find what local buyers are typing in because that is where your customers will come from. The other reason you want local buyer phrases is because you will be able to rank for it much faster than the more competitive general phrase.

Once you know what your keyword phrases are going to be it is time to do some research. Look up the sites that are ranking for those terms and write them down. Next go into the keyword tool like before and check the box website content and see what keywords come up. If you missed some keywords your competitors might help you find them. Next you want to look up their back links through backlinkfinder.com or another site like it. Find out where they got their links from and go get them also. Finally you are going to go into your browser and look up each site and do a view in the tab then page source. Here you will see their title, description, H1 tags and keywords. You can pattern your site after the top ones which will help you to get up there faster.

Now that you have done a lot of research you can make some choices for your keywords. You should have a list of hundreds of keywords and phrases to use. It is imperative to narrow the list down to a manageable amount. The fastest way to get clients coming in is to break keywords down by competition then searches. For competition go to Google search box and do an “allintitle: keyword” search without quotes into Google. Anything under 10,000 is very easy to rank for. Start with those phrases first which should immediately start the cash flow through internet visitors. While they are ranking well then target keywords with up to 25,000 “allintitle” and so forth up the line.

Obviously there is a lot more to be done but I had to limit the scope of this article. If you can use these free keyword tools then you can be successful in your keyword research. At some point you will want to dig further and analyze with some other tools. At that time have an expert do this for you.

Let’s look at the average consumer these days. Getting a good deal is very important to them. That is why nearly 80% of local buyers will shop via the internet first. This is fast and requires no outlay to find a good offer. Once they find that offer they buy it over the internet and have it delivered. NO THEY DON’T! While a good price is important it is still more important to know they have someone standing behind the product. The last thing anyone can afford is money that is wasted through an unscrupulous internet seller, so they will purchase it locally almost 70% of the time.

This then begs the question what are you doing to get in front of this person? Are you just there hoping they will find you? This is what I mean by being aggressive in your small business. First make sure you are ranking high in Google for all local search terms. I won’t go into numbers but you need to be on the first page or people won’t find you. When they do find you it is imperative you drive them into your store.

Next, you must be making a splash in social networking. Not only do these sites rank high, there are thousands of potential buyers there. They congregate to discuss things and some of the discussions will be about have you ever bought X? If you sell X wouldn’t you want to be in that discussion?

The internet is a lot like being in a mall with buyers all around. Do you close the storefront? No you put deals and specials at the door that almost begs consumers to come in and check out your store. You give away little knick knacks that almost guilt the shopper to come in. You hand out coupons all over the mall to try and drive people into the store. The owner stands in a place to welcome and introduce themselves inspiring trust.

So know look at your website like it is a storefront in a mall. Give away coupons to get them to come in. Make sure you list your loss leaders on the front page to keep people at your store. Use social sites to get them to know and like you. They will be loyal if they know, like, and trust you.

These are all things you can accomplish on your own to drive up sales. They do take time and effort but will be worth it now and in the future. The difference with marketing on the internet it stays versus other advertising that needs to be constantly run. If you don’t think you have the time or expertise, look up a local seo person to help. They are small business owners like yourself and understand how to implement this strategy at the best cost for you. I, of course, would be willing to help!

First thing to do is make sure your website is up to snuff. Most savvy consumers are searching online to find the best places to shop locally. Your first impression to them is what the see on the internet. Will they be impressed or will they just skip you.

Then you need to make sure you are collecting e mail addresses of all your prospects and customers. You can inexpensively market them on a continual basis then. You do this by getting them to sign up at your store or on your website. All it takes is to give them something of value and they will allow you to market to them every week.

Next you must make sure you rank in the top of search engines for your pertinent keywords. Keywords are those types of services and products you sell locally. You need to be in the first three results for those items so that all consumers can find you.

You must also make sure to list your business on all local directories. These directories are used by shoppers to find stores and your information must be accurate. Make sure all phone numbers, addresses, websites are the same in every directory. This also adds trust to the shoppers and Google.

Be active in online communities. If you belong to the BBB or the chamber of commerce make sure you are active in the forums and websites of both. Be sure to get your name out there in all local forums so that people know and trust you. Your expertise is something that people would like to tap and will then become loyal to you.

There are some inexpensive ways to market your business online. By doing this you can cut some of your marketing costs but not your business. You will also prepare yourself for the future.

Local SEO is becoming more important to local small businesses than ever before. The search engines are becoming more advanced and try to send local searchers and buyers to localized websites. As this trend continues, those small businesses that optimize for local search will have a step ahead of the rest. Hiring someone now who can optimize your site for mobile marketing and local search will prepare you for the flood of searches that is coming. It will be harder to remove you from the top position as you have been there along time and were optimized first. I would highly recommend that you plan for local internet marketing now to take advantage of the wave to come. Start by reading this informative article and make a comment on my blog.

In recent months, Google has already begun placing a great deal more emphasis on location than it has in the past. For example, last month, the search engine added a new search option to its list, called “nearby.” This lets users filter their results based on either their default location or a custom one.

Google: Location a “Hugely Important” Signal | WebProNews

Tags: LocalSeo Help

Google’s Need For Freshness Sours Search Results | WebProNews

Link velocity refers to the speed at which new links to a webpage are formed, and by this term we main gain some new and vital insight. Historically, great bursts of new links to a specific page has been considered a red flag, the quickest way to identify a spammer trying to manipulate the results by creating the appearance of user trust. This led to Google’s famous assaults on link farms and paid link directories.