Why do businesses think that just because they have something to sell everybody wants to be inundated with it?  Turn the entire Social Media concept upside down, put yourself in the receivers seat.  The #1 complaint I get from people about Social Media is that they don’t want friends or joins because they hate the constant badgering of companies trying to sell them something.

See any correlation here?

A lot of the same people that are experiencing failure with their Social Media campaigns are in direct conflict with how they view Social Media to begin with.  So let’s straighten this out and look at a better strategy.

Relationships … Social Media success can be boiled down to this one word.  The reason this entire concept has taken off like wildfire is society’s craving for relationships again, taking the time to communicate authentically to your following is vital.  And here is the key to communication: it isn’t all about you! In fact it isn’t about you at all, change your mindset to what does your following need and deliver that for free (using tips, resources and maybe even humor).  Build rapport with your following, serve them every chance you get and the business will follow …

Of course your listings in Marketplace will show up to the general public, each item you list can create a status update as well so that your entire friend list can see and share them.  This could be cool, right?

Ginger Azzopardi has been a massage therapist since 1994 and has helped relieve pain, stress and many other afflictions of the body for her clients using skill, connection and essential oils.  It was time for Ginger to increase her client base and she could see that the Internet was the best place to start.

Her original site was built as a favor which gave her a precense, but did not give her the website that would be found in Search Engines due to the architecture was not Search Engine friendly and the design was limited.  After a short visit with Ginger she wa able to see the full opportunity an expandable website would open up for her and SHE WAS EXCITED!!

Massage is a field of specialty that can serve a myriad of afflictions, by creating a website that is easy to maintain Ginger could update consistently to educate potential patients on how massage can bring comfort and movement back to their lives.  Now you will find blog posts of new modalities offered as well as client experiences (as permission is given by the client).

We achieved a beautiful design that captured Gingers passion, expanded on the different treaments she offers with benefits of each treatment type and a blog. 

>> www.akneadtorelax.com

I have never had a real website before and finally realized I needed one for my massage practice.  I met Emily and things happened FAST.  She mentioned blogging (which I had never done) and my being able to take charge of the site myself and that it would be easy to manage.  SHE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.  I’m able to take my site “into my own hands” so to speak.  She has made it SIMPLE for someone who knows NOTHING about computer stuff to be able to accomplish managing my own site without having to depend on calling in someone else to do it for me!!  Not only is management easy, the site looks great and it’s more than I could have imagined.     
Ginger A — Albuquerque

Mary Lou Dobbs attended a peer website review session to show off her new website, unfortunately the group did not come back with the praise she had hoped for.  How many times have you heard this same story?  A new website built only to find out the designer did not incorporate an SEO friendly design.

What Mary Lou needed was a website that allowed her to manage the events area to increase the accuracy of her speaking schedule, while incorporating a design that had style as well as function both for the user and Search Engines.

We started from scratch using the colors from the book and highlighting her beautiful motorcycle, added in a CSS base drop down menu for expandability and incorporated a database driven event list program to allow her to update the speaking calendar page without needing to know any web design.

The other missing element from the original website was a lead capture to allow Mary Lou to interact with visitors that connected with her message.  By integrating a powerful tip in exchange for an email address the client is now collecting visitor information.

>> www.repottingyourself.com

Every web-site needs traffic if it’s going to succeed – and the most reliable, consistent, profitable, high-volume source of traffic comes from the search engines

All it takes is getting 3 SIMPLE things right! – the 3 Golden Rules…

But 99% of sites get these 3 things wrong (without even realizing it at the time) – and as a result, the odds of success are stacked against them, making decent profits (not even big profits) becomes a massive struggle…

…And, as a result, most web sites fall far short of their potential!

These brief videos will show you how to avoid making big traffic-generation mistakes that will cost you time, energy and money.

• Find out how to uncover “gold-nugget” keywords – each of these keywords can send hundreds or even thousands of free visitors to your site each day.
• Stop attracting time-wasting tire-kickers to your web-site, and target the keywords in your market that real buyers are using right now.
• Discover exactly how to beat the competition, and get front-page rankings in Google for high-traffic keywords in weeks or days – not months or years.

fine print: I was not paid to write this review of Market Samurai, and yes the link above is an affiliate link. I only recommend products I actually use and if they have an affiliate program then why not make a few dollars as well.

But suprisingly SEOP alone is not enough. The copy content and calls-to-action throughout the website need to entice the visitor to engage.  Bringing traffic to an ill-designed site is a waste of your time and resources.

<strong>SEO Strategy Group</strong> is committed to improving the <strong>search engine optimization &amp; positioning</strong> of your web site, and will propose a tailored SEO campaign plan to cost effectively and professionally meet your business goals.  Our Scope of Work will include site design consulting, keyword research, allied web promotion &amp; development activities, SEO-friendly content optimization, and tracking of your web site’s progess across all three major search engines.  Upon project completion, your web site will be more visible and accessible across the Internet.
<h3>Why choose SEO Strategy Group</h3>
Not all Search Engine analysts are equal.  With SEO Strategy Group you are getting 9 years of experience in web design and SEO, with over 4 years as a top educator and public speaker in the SEO industry.  In addition, company founder and Sr. SEO Emily Leach continually organizies a number free events every year, helping small business owners and entrepenuers throughout the Southwest increase their understanding and utilization of the world wide web.<strong> Call SEO Strategy Group today and let us get you started on the path to web site success</strong>

<img src=”/images/stories/get-started.jpg” alt=”get-started” width=”333″ height=”61″ />

I have already written an entire article on the Google comment addition, so I won’t go in to detail here about that one. The second icon you see within the results on Google now allows you to “self-promote” a search result to the top of the page. When you click on the promote icon that result will immediately move to the top result, and then show a green demote button just to the right of that results title. Clicking the green demote will only push the result back to it’s original result position.

The third option is the delete icon, when clicking the delete image the search result is moved to a section created at the bottom of the page that will hold all of the results you delete. If you decide you want that result back in it’s original position just select the restore option to the right of the result title.

Remember, these options only show up if you are logged in to your Google account, and at this point probably aren’t making a huge difference in your results.

Besides the new ‘sidewiki’, which we won’t discuss here, Google has added the option to add public comments to a website and have that comment show up right in the result page. As you can see in the image to the right the top arrow is pointing to a new icon after the URL, this let’s you put your own comment about that result. Below that line you can see the note “Comment by Searcher, Today” and then the actual comment. Google will use your Google account nickname on your comment post if you have one, if not then it defaults to ‘Searcher’.

Once you click on the comment icon you will see a box, like illustrated below, to write out your comment. Needless to say it will be interesting to see how this gets added in to the SERP algorithm in addition to how it will affect reputation management. And I haven’t found much said about this new feature from Google.

I can see how comments, assuming they are authentic, could be very helpful in selecting which URL you want to dive in to. On another note, it will make it even more imparative to get your marketing message right at the title tag. If people start depending on this comment information to make decisions they will never see your great offer on the site. But if people are writing great things in your result comments you would be golden anyway!

As you use this comment feature come back and leave me some feedback on the results you are finding

Take myself for instance, all I do in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization for my clients, Strategy Group members and my own projects.  I make sure my experience is the best it can be by following and working with the best in the industry, continual education, testing strategies and implementation going on 9 years!  Yeah, that’s a long time in this industry … I don’t take it lightly, and those that know me say I live and breathe it.  That is a tremendous compliment!

If you are getting ready to hire a traditional marketing company and they are selling you on the use of Social Media you need to come to the table prepared!  Here are some questions they should be able to answer, and the answers you need to be looking for:

Q: How long have you had Social Media implemented in your company?

A: You want to see at least 2 years, that’s right were they in the afterthought stage of the game or an early adopter that really has a firm footing in this industry.

Q: What is your background in Internet Marketing strategies as a whole?

A: You want to see 3-5 years minimum in the Internet Marketing field, this field has been changing faster than any other in history.    How did they implement eMail marketing, an online branding campaing, YouTube, Twitter, or even Facebook.  Getting on board with any of these with just a year or so of background is extremely limiting when developing a strategy.  A strong background in Internet Marketing will tell you how hard they work to stay on top of the next emerging tactic and how they will test and implement it in to your campaign.

Q: Who will be handling your Social Media?

A: If they say them – your done … move on.  Social Media is all about your voice, your relationship with your followers and ‘friends’.  What happens when the person that is writing for you leaves, now a new guy comes in and the voice is completely different.  OR, what if you want to interject an update – it WILL sound different than your ‘hired voice’.

Q: Where do you start with Social Media?

A: If they give you a long list of sites to create profiles on then your going to feel overwhelmed in trying to get enough followers on them all that is it destined to fail.  Granted there are some top level Internet Marketers that can create all these profile accounts and get followers overnight, if you are at that level you’re not reading this article anyway.

If you only ask these 4 questions, look for strong experience and request references to existing clients to chat with you will be in much better shape!  I’ve been in this industry since 2001 and can see the snake oil from the experience in a minute, but most cannot.  Unfortunately the il-informed are being taken advantage of everyday, my goal is to help you make better decisions for the health of your business!

Comments are greatly appreciated, please share your experiences working Social Media or lessons learned with marketers.

emily

But how can you get more regional traffic? There are options for you, and depending on the size of the region your looking to show up in will depend on the amount of effort you need to put forth.  For instance if you’re in a town of a few thousand people just having a website that describes your services and or products along with your physical location will probably do the trick.  But when you get in to a city of hundreds of thousands and millions of people you got some competition to contend with for sure!

First off, make sure you are in the Google Local listings in order to show up in that list of businesses that are normally displayed at the top of the Search Engine listings.  It’s free and really quite simple to do, if your still not compfortable with it you can find a tutorial video in the training library on this site coming January 2009.  That will have a step-by-step guide for you.

The question that comes up the most regarding Google Local listings is how can you show up at the top?  It is based on the post office address, so if the user puts in a city name then it goes off of the central post office for that city.  If they put in an area or area code for that city, for example ‘hollywood hills, ca’, then the system will pull from the central post office of that area of the city.  It does have to be a business address, residential addresses get weeded out of the system.

Secondly, use your Internet Marketing strategies to dominate the Search Engine rankings for your niche market.  Use video, blog entries, article marketing AND your website to take more than just one place.  If you not familiar with these methods then you may want to spend some time educating yourself on these options, check out the SEO resources section of this site to get you started on the best tools to start with.  Some are free and some have fees, but you have to start somewhere.  And I do not believe that having a site that ranks great AND performs even better has to be expensive.

The most important lesson in optimizing a web site is to never stop working on it! Keep your eyes and ears open for how your customers are searching for you, what words do they relate with your business.  Then optimize for those phrases as well, the key is content … if your not willing to create content, or have content created, then you are already done.  Your competitors WILL beat you out, and leave you wondering where the traffic went.

Remember … your SEO Strategy is Only as Good as it’s Results!

Emily Leach