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Five Tips to Improve Local Business Search Results

For businesses serving their local communities, ranking near the top of Google search results provides a key marketing edge. According to Google research into local search behavior, 4 in 5 consumers use search engines via mobile devices and computers to find local information such as store addresses, business hours, product availability, and directions. People choose from the first few search results rather than dig deeper in the search engine results page (SERP), so it is vital to get your business near the top of  the searches.

Here’s a checklist of simple steps to help ensure your company doesn’t get lost in the local search shuffle:

    1. Make sure your business information is accurate and complete—everywhere that it appears online. If you haven’t already, make a list of all the places your company is listed online and verify you’ve provided up-to-date and consistent information across all channels. Google My Business, industry directories, social media channels, Yellowpages.com, etc.—your name, address, phone number, website URL, and other information should be uniform and relevant.
    2. Focus on delivering ease-of-use to your website visitors—and avoid applications like Flash media. Usability of your website can play a role in how long website visitors stay on your site, which in turn plays a role in the online authority Google attributes to your company. Flash media may create some fancy visuals, but it can slow the load time of your pages and detract from the user experience.
    3. Optimize your website for search. Aside from consulting an SEO (search engine optimization) specialist to help you with this, you can take some measures on your own. Pay attention to the page title tags on your site so they provide not only your company name, but also give a brief description of your business (just be sure to stay within 50–60 characters so your title isn’t cut off in the results). Your meta descriptions, the 150–160-character long snippet that displays with your title in search results, should provide searchers with information that captures their attention. And on your website, make sure you include contact info on every page.
    4. Blog consistently, so you’re regularly adding fresh content to your website. A website that updates its content often will stand a far better chance of ranking higher in local search than one that is stagnant. Your blog posts will enable you to provide fresh content targeting local keywords and search terms related to your business. Not only does blogging provide SEO benefits, but it also gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and build trust with your audience. And don’t forget to share your blog posts via your social media channels to generate more traffic to your website. Engagement on social media in combination with blogging works well in boosting your local search mojo.
    5. Make sure your website is mobile friendly. Google’s research revealed that 88 percent of local searches are done via smartphones. And those local searchers tend to take action quickly when they find what they’re looking for. According to their study, 50 percent of consumers who performed a local search on their smartphone proceeded to visit a store within one day. Those statistics say it all for stressing the importance of having a mobile-friendly website!

When you sell your products and services to a customer base that’s primarily local, these small efforts can make a big difference in your success in securing business through online searches. If you need guidance in getting on the right path with your online and other marketing efforts, remember that our SCORE mentors bring a broad spectrum of expertise and experience to small business owners in all industries. Contact us about our free mentoring services.

 

The Perks Of Periscope For Marketing Your Small Business

Periscope, the live video streaming app for iOS and Android,  has been making waves on the social media scene since it was purchased by Twitter in March 2015. Businesses and individuals ranging from Oprah to Spotify to Red Bull to Bernie Sanders use the app to reach millions viewers with live broadcasts of events, products and services. As Periscope’s tagline states, it allows its users to “explore the world through someone else’s eyes.”

 

How Does Periscope Work?

With the Periscope mobile app, you can make live broadcasts of whatever you’re doing, whenever you’re doing it. Live broadcasts can be shared through Twitter, shared with your Periscope followers or shared with their followers much like how a friend shares a post on Facebook. You can also invite select followers to a private broadcast.

Viewers can “heart” and comment on your broadcasts in real-time and you can respond to those comments immediately, creating an interactive experience.

If users miss a live broadcast, they can watch a replay of it for up to 24 hours after it has ended. Although broadcasts are removed after 24 hours, you can save them to your mobile device and post them online as often as you desire.

 

Using Periscope to Boost Business

You may be thinking, “Sounds great, but how could Periscope help my business?”

Here are a few ideas for making the most of Periscope’s marketing potential:

  • Behind the scenes tour—to give viewers a glimpse of where the magic happens and who is making it happen at your business.
  • Announcements—to launch a new product, introduce a new hire, announce new certifications or awards, etc.
  • Product demos—to introduce new products or show how your products are made.
  • Interviews with team members—to introduce new hires or showcase the expertise and skills of employees.
  • Q&A sessions—to tackle FAQs about your company and its products and services or industry issues.
  • Events—capture the action at an open house, customer appreciation day, award presentation, etc.
  • How-to sessions—to give viewers step-by-step instructions to accomplish or use something.
  • Focus groups—to capture honest input and feedback about products and services (either those that you’re considering or that you already offer).

While Periscope is still in its infancy, the key to making it work for your business is no different than for any other online social media platform:

  • Be active.
  • Be engaged.
  • Be consistent.

 

To learn more about Periscope and how to use it, check out these resources:

Is Email Marketing Worth the Investment?

With social media, texting, and other instantaneous ways of marketing your products and services, you might be wondering if anyone really pays attention to emails anymore.

Statistics say they do.

  • According to eMarketer, 69.7 percent of internet users say email is their preferred method of communicating with businesses.
  • And Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s 2015 State of Marketing report shows…
    • Seventy-four percent of marketers believe email produces (or will produce) ROI.
    • Seventy-three percent of marketers agree that email marketing is core to their business

How Could Email Marketing Help Your Small Business?

You can use email marketing to fulfill a number of objectives. For example you can…

  • Introduce new products and services.
  • Announce special offers, promotions, and contests.
  • Provide tips to help customers use your products and services more effectively.
  • Share industry news that will affect your customers.
  • Share event highlights.
  • Introduce new team members.
  • Highlight recent awards or press coverage your business has received.

You can get the most from your email marketing efforts when you integrate them with your other online marketing strategies. For instance, you can share links to your blog posts and other pages of your website in your email marketing messages, share your email marketing message links on social media, and incorporate links to your social media accounts in your email marketing messages. All of those things will boost the visibility of each platform you’re using.

Small Business Email Marketing Platforms

Several small business email marketing solutions exist. Some are free, and some have fees (which typically start out small and increase as you increase the size of your mailing list).

As you explore the options, consider these things:

  • Your budget
  • The frequency at which you’ll be sending email marketing messages
  • Your level of comfort in using technology tools (some platforms are more user-friendly than others)

Most importantly, know the rules and regulations set forth by the Federal Trade Commission for email marketing. There are laws in place to protect people from unwanted solicitation emails. Fail to comply with them and you could find yourself paying a hefty fine. No small business owner needs that!

If you’re considering making email marketing part of your business marketing strategy but don’t know where to begin, talk with a SCORE mentor. At SCORE, we have a team of dedicated volunteers who can help guide you in your marketing efforts and help you with all other aspects of growing your business.

Mobile Apps: Small Business Owners, Don’t Leave the Office Without Them!

Managing time – and finding enough of it – stands as one of the biggest challenges small business owners face. With the demands of running all aspects of your business, it takes more than just time to accomplish all that you need to do; it also takes tools. Mobile apps can be a life saver for on-the-go entrepreneurs. There’s a plethora of free apps available for both Android and iOS mobile devices to help you take care of business no matter where you are. Best of all, you can turn what might otherwise be wasted time (waiting for a client or standing in line at the local deli) into productive time by having some key apps on hand.

Consider these mobile apps for your business:

Social Media Management Apps
No matter which social networks use in your marketing efforts, there are mobile apps for them. Facebook Pages Manager, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Pinterest, and Instagram…all have free apps you can download to your smartphone or tablet. Capabilities vary from app to app, but they all give you the ability to post updates to your social accounts and monitor and interact with the activity of others in your newsfeed.

You might also want to check out Hootsuite and Buffer. Both are social media management tools that enable you to not only post to social networks in real time, but to also schedule future posts.

Blogging Apps
Both WordPress and Blogger enable you to create new blog posts, edit existing posts, upload images to your blog, manage comments, and publish posts directly from your mobile device. From crafting new posts to putting the finish touches on drafts, you can tend to your blog from anywhere.

Note-taking Apps
For capturing ideas and making to do lists, check out Evernote or Microsoft OneNote. Both enable you to create text notes, audio notes, and check lists that you can tag and organize into notebooks for easy reference and retrieval. From within the apps, you can take photos of documents, receipts, post-it notes, etc. to store them electronically and eliminate the clutter of paper in your office.

The beauty of all these apps is that they sync across all the devices you access them from so you can effortlessly and conveniently stay on top of things no matter where you are. It’s a very good reason not to leave the office without them!

What mobile apps have helped you manage your business on the go?

Five Tools No Business Owner Should Go Without

As a business owner, you’re doing all you can to reduce your costs; after all, this is one of the greatest ways to keep more money in your pocket. Whether you run your business from home or a co-working location, technology can help save you time and money.  Here are five social marketing tools to add to your arsenal.

Email Marketing

MailChimp makes it easy to create content with a catchy, streamlined email formatting platform to reach the masses. Allowing business owners to target specific customer lists, you can target your email blasts to those potential customers who aren’t faithful to your brand – yet. MailChimp is a great free option for business with less than 2,000 email subscribers who send less than 12,000 total emails each month. Another great option is Constant Contact, which “wrote the book on Engagement Marketing.” Offering a combination of free, personalized coaching and a unique set of online marketing tools, Constant Contact helps business from start-ups to well-established companies engage with their customers.

Social Media Management

As you’re probably well aware, being active on social media is a great way to get the word out about your company, but if not done properly, your social networking can actually backfire on you. Unfortunately, there are a lot of business owners out there who believe they simply don’t have the time to be as active on Facebook and Twitter to make social media worth their while. Gremln is one tool that makes posting to all of your social media accounts a breeze. Allowing users to schedule posts in advance, you can sit down and get your weeks’ worth of tweets and Facebook posts created, and allow Gremln to take over and post on your behalf at the times you schedule the posts to go live. HootSuite, another popular option, has built a following of over 7 million users through the ability to easily manage multiple social media campaigns from one platform. Ultimately, it will come down to the ease-of-use for either, but Gremln and HootSuite will take your social media strategies to the next level.

Credit Card Reader

No matter the size of your company, unless you have a retail store, there really is no need for your business to deal with cash transactions. Many small business owners have transitioned toward mobile credit card readers to accept payments when they’re meeting customers face-to-face, while implementing an E-commerce system on their websites to process credit card transactions. With Intuit GoPayment, you can choose between paying a monthly fee or a convenience pay-as-you-go pricing structure that charges you a percentage for each sale you make, helping keep more of your money within the company. Square is another great tool allowing users to accept credit cards on the go. Whether you use an Android or iOS smartphone, just plug the Square into your headphone jack and you’re ready to swipe cards and get paid for your products and services.

Tax & Accounting Software

One of the least favorite tasks many business owners are left with is dealing with corporate taxes. While it’s extremely tempting to hire a CPA to do your company’s taxes, that’s an expense you don’t need to pay for. Quicken provides business owners with more than a simple tax return, allowing users to maximize deductions while breaking down your taxes line-by-line. Quicken also provides users with the ability to manage every single business expense, from purchasing new office equipment to mileage reimbursements. Sage 50 is another accounting software package many business owners have already utilized. Built to handle all of your accounting needs, Sage 50 allows users to view multiple files simultaneously, manage cash flow, payments and collections, and reduce errors while deterring fraud thanks to a screen-level security system included with the software.

Temporary Assistance

Sometimes we need additional help, but due to monetary restraints, we aren’t able to hire the full-or part-time help we need. That’s where Odesk comes in; providing you the perfect way to connect with freelancers for any project you need help wrapping up. By posting your job or task for free, Odesk connects business owners with thousands of qualified freelancers from around the globe. However, if you need help with less specialized tasks, TextBroker is another great tool to take advantage of. Requiring its authors to go through an extensive background process, TextBroker allows business owners to request articles to be written for online content, and also allows you to include SEO options to target specific keywords. With five different quality levels of writing to choose from, you can get the help you need while remaining within budget.

Bradley Derringer is a blogger for TechBreach, giving you the latest on all things tech.

Market Your Business Online

Begin the New Year by taking a fresh look at your business marketing strategy – how are you positioned  with So Lo Mo?   This cool buzzword stands for  Social Local Mobile, and these 3 marketing trends require your immediate attention.  2013 is the year to engage your brand or service with an interested audience, for free.

Do you have a social media presence for your business?  If not, why not? Social media simplifies a one-to one relationship with your customers.  Facebook is a place to start for your social media engagement.   Build your brand awareness and be part of a conversation.  It is easy to set up, free to use  and customers can locate your business should you lack a website.

If you still don’t have a website, now is the time to launch one and be found.  Head over to wordpress.com and set up a website or a blog for free.  Do you already own your domain name? It costs $13.00 to launch your website with your custom domain name and hosting on wordpress.com is free.  Talk about a no-brainer solution!

Choose a  website theme with a responsive design, which means it adapts to the screen resolution of the device its being viewed on.  Responsive design delivers a great viewing experience whether a tablet, or a smart phone or a PC. There are 59 responsive themes to choose from on wordpress.com. Some are free and some are premium (paid) themes.   Pick one you like (I like Watson from The Theme Foundry) and get started.  In a mobile world your website appearance is critical.  Enable your customers to find you in a flash!

You get the smart device implications, right?   Over 119 million of us are using a smart phone.

There were 17.5 million new smart device activations on December 25th, last December 25th 6.8 million.

Check out smart phone facts:  96% of smart phone users have researched a business or product on their phone;  94% have searched for local information; 70% called local businesses after searching.

Be found or be gone because smart phone users move on if they can’t find an address or phone number.  We all have the attention span of a gnat when we are searching for a solution.    Sprint over to getlisted.org and make sure your business information is available and current.  The search bots will be crawling all over your freshly updated contact details.

Don’t be left out of the conversation.  Get your message right with Social Local and Mobile.  Your customers will thank you with their business. And these 3 tips won’t break your budget.  Do it now!