As a small business owner there is an overwhelming amount of information regarding internet marketing, social media marketing and search engine optimization. It can be difficult to know where to focus your limited amount of time or marketing budget.

If I could only read 5 marketing blogs, and make decisions based on their input, these are what I’d read and who I’d listen to:

1. John Jantsch – Duct Tape Marketing Learn to do more with less.

2. Small Business Trends – An award-winning online publication for small business owners and entrepreneurs

3. Google Webmaster Blog – Get information directly from the source

4. Mashable - The volume of information can be overwhelming, but if it’s happening online, Mashable’s got the info.

5. Vertical Response – Focused on email marketing

On of the questions I’m frequently asked is “where should a business start after deciding to market their business online?”.

The answer for brick and mortar businesses is to start by establishing or claiming your Google Places listing. An ever increasing number of people reach for their computer and Google local businesses instead of tracking down the phone book.You don’t even have to have a website to be listed on Google Places. It’s most effective if you have a physical location but they’ve recently made changes that allow you to specify a service area if you own a business that primarily visits customers at their location.

How to add your listing to Google Places:

1. Visit Google Places.
2. If you already have a Google Account, sign in with your email and password. You can also use an AdWords login address and password, if you have one. If you don’t have a Google Account, click Sign up for an account now. Google Places accounts are not transferable, so if you are planning to share this account with other users, create a Google account that you would not mind sharing with others.
3. On Google Places homepage, click Add new business.
4. On the “Find your business” tab, search for your business by phone number to see if Google already has information about your business.
   • Select the country of your business location from the drop-down.
   • Enter the phone number of your business listing.
   • Click Find business information.
5. Review the search results, if any, to see if one of them describes your business.
   • If none of the results are related to your business, you will be prompted to add business information on the Edit Details page.
   • If none of the results is your business, click Add a new listing. You’ll be prompted to add more information on the next page.
6. Fill out the basic information about your business. This includes:
   • Company/Organization: This is the official/registered name of your business.
   • Address (required): The address should look exactly the way you’d write it on a standard mailing envelope. If you are a service-area business, you’ll be able to hide your address in a few steps.
   • Phone Number (required): Be sure to include the area code with your phone number.
   • Website: Your website URL can be a maximum of 255 characters.
7. Click Next.You’ll now have the opportunity to provide the following information about your business:
   • Categories: Enter several categories to describe your business, to make it easier for others to find when they search Google. Google will automatically suggest categories as you type. Make sure you choose one Google-suggested category before adding customizable categories. You can enter up to 5 categories for your business.
   • Hours of operation: Select your hours of operation using the dropdown menus. If you would prefer not to specify your hours of operation, keep the radio button selected next to “I prefer not to specify operating hours.”
   • Payment options: Select the checkboxes next to the payment methods that your business accepts.
   • Photos: Use the photo uploader to add a photo from your computer, or specify a URL to add a photo from the web. You can add up to 10 photos to your listing. To learn more about adding photos, check out the User Guide.
   • Video: To add a video, upload it to YouTube and copy and paste the URL to your Places listing. You can add up to 5 videos to your listing. For help with uploading your video to YouTube, read the article on how to upload a video in the YouTube Help Center.
   • Additional details: Use this section to add custom information fields to your listing. For example, parking availability, or whether your business allows pets.
8. You can preview your listing as it will appear in Maps on the right side of your screen. New information will appear in the preview as you enter it. When you’re satisfied with your listing, click Submit at the bottom of the page.
9. Choose how you would like to verify your listing and click Finish.

Once you’ve submitted your business information, you’ll be asked to verify it before it goes live.

You can see your listing live on Google by signing into your Google Places account and clicking See your listing on Google. This link will take you to your actual Place Page, as seen by users.

Source: Google

Amazing statistics regarding social media usage. Based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.

Now what? Your small business is on Twitter but what in the world are you supposed to say? Here are some ideas for when you find yourself tongue-tied.  Remember: everything in moderation. If your Twitter stream is endless promotion or get too personal in your updates you will alienate some of your current and potential customers.

1. Share a holiday or other special promotion
2. Give a coupon to your Twitter followers
3. Let your followers know when you update your blog or website
4. Tweet news or articles you find online. This is easy using a bookmarklet such as Sharaholic for Firefox
5. Share from Facebook or other social networking sites
6. Retweet and comment on other tweets
7. Ask and answer questions related to your product or service
8. Announce a new product or service
9. Bring a human face to your business by sharing a little of your personal life (not too much!)
10. Quotes -  If you don’t have anything to say borrow some words from a famous or soon to be famous person.  Quotes must be 140 characters or less.

These are some of my favorites:

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” ~Will Rogers
“Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching” Thomas Jefferson
“Stay committed to your decisions, but stays flexible in your approach” Tony Robbins
“All great achievements require time” Maya Angelou
“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten” Tony Robbins

In small towns and large cities all across the nation, Local SEO experts increasing profits for small businesses in every category. How? By optimizing their websites to show up on the first page of Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing and other popular search engines across the internet. An increasing percentage of people search Google for almost all of their products, services and needs. With that said, you can see why making businesses show up on Google for certain search terms can increase profits. By achieving an organic Google search result for multiple results a website can get many visits per day from targeted customers who are searching for exactly what the website is offering.

If you have a business, you need a website. If you have a website (or once you do) you are going to need people to visit that website. However, someone looking for car tires is not going to care much about your tax preparation website. That’s where SEO comes in. A website needs to be “keyword optimized” so that it can show up in relevant searches. Business owners can select to pay for PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising costs if they want to be a “Sponsored Ad” on Google, but that still doesn’t get nearly as much exposure as an all natural result and it costs more.

Contact City Media Consulting at (858) 386-4780 for more information about Local SEO and small business marketing.

If you own a business, whether it is a small business or a large one, you might not be taking advantage of one of your biggest assets – your customer list. If you have a business, you likely have a website… If you don’t, we can help with that too.

If you’re not collecting your visitor’s email addresses on your website; you could be missing out on a significant amount of repeat business.  We can quickly setup a simple form on your website to encourage your visitors to enter their first name and email address. This list will allow you to notify your list of your current promotions at far less cost than a physical mailing or newspaper advertisement.

Call our customer service team today  at (858) 486-4780 to ask about our New Customer Special.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO, is something that every business owner is looking into as a way to get the internet exposure they need as maintain and even increase their customer base. The topic of SEO can be confusing but there are really only a few basics every business owner must know.

SEO is the process of optimizing your business’s website for the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Although it is said that you are optimizing the website for the search engines, what you’re really doing is optimizing your site for the people who want to find it. Basically, when someone searches Google for a keyword related to your business, for example “restaurant in New York City” — You will want to show up within the first couple of pages of the search results, otherwise your people will be finding your competitors and not your business.

There are two ways to show up within the first few pages of the search results; one way is to set up a PPC campaign, where you pay for each click that you get to your website — but this method can get expensive. Then, there is the increasingly popular “Organic SEO” method, where an SEO specialist uses the power of keywords, link building and other factors to optimize your website so that it shows up in the natural, “organic” search results. This is when your website gets shown on the first few pages of Google for the terms your customers are searching for.

People strive to show up in the organic search results which are located on the left side of any search on Google, Yahoo, etc. The right side displays the “sponsored links” which are paid for by running a Pay-Per-Click campaign with the search engine itself and paying a set amount per click to display on the first or second page.

Search Engine Optimization is important for any website. Consumers and businesses are increasingly using the internet in lieu of the Yellow Pages and having a listing on the top search engines can bring a significant amount of site visitors and therefore potential customers right to your door.

* Companies that blog have far better marketing results. Specifically, the average company that blogs has:
* 55% more visitors
* 97% more inbound links
* 434% more indexed pages

Source

“86% of local searchers follow up with direct contact and 61% of those make a purchase. As a small business owner, that means you can no longer afford to take your chances with mailers or phone book ads that may or may not be working.”

Source

We’re specialists at creating a comprehensive online strategy. We take the time to fully understand your business, customers, competition and your goals. Then we deliver a strategic solution fully customized for your business.