Why Local Business Organizations Still Matter

Last year, I discussed the importance of traditional networking through local chambers of commerce or other organizations. I still maintain that nothing beats face-to-face networking to market your product or service, but with the sweeping shift to social search, membership in local business networks has an added benefit.

If your local chamber has an online presence, which most do, you have access to additional link building opportunities. Combine your traditional networking with a social media presence, a listing on your chamber website and services like “Google Places” to create the ultimate local marketing strategy without spending a dime.

A long-time client recently told me that he recognized the importance of social media and local search, wanting to shift his attention away from print advertising and focus on building an online presence for local search.

As an owner of three eating establishments, all located in a popular tourist town, he knew he would be better served by local search than local print advertisements. After all, anyone looking for places to eat while on vacation will search online long before their arrival.

His campaign started with the establishment of “Google Places” accounts for each of his three businesses. We filled in all relevant information for each one including, hours of operation, categories/food types, pricing, links, photos, etc.

Next, we created individual Facebook pages for each business, again including as much information as possible.Creating a Facebook page and garnering a bunch of “likes” is great for business and helps build search engine authority, but maintaining a Facebook presence is an ongoing task. Thankfully, this is something that my client recognizes and, after a few quick lessons, is now committed to remaining active on his pages and engaging his customers.

Finally, we beefed up his company listings on his local business organization website.

When it comes to chamber of commerce websites, or in this case his local business improvement district site, the level of control a business has over its listing and the quality of the directory can vary. In this case, the client is lucky enough to have full control of his business listing. Again, we included as much information as possible, including links to menus and Facebook pages.

In just a few months the results have been astounding. Each of the three businesses have gained significant ground on the search engine results pages and we expect the trend to continue.

The important lesson here is that a local campaign can be launched for relatively no cost and will out-perform local print advertising nine times out of ten. Of course, the client paid 9TWENTY9 Media to create the campaign, but at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. In addition, now that the campaign has launched the client has made a commitment to manage it on his own and as a media consultant looking out for the best interest of my client, this is what I strive for.

Click here for specific information about this campaign.
 
So tell me, how do you use social networking and local search to boost your business?

Traditional Networking vs. Social Networking

Social media websites have become the most efficient and cost effective way for businesses to market themselves, but that doesn’t mean that small business owners can afford to abandon traditional face-to-face networking strategies.

Sure, utilizing social media is much cheaper than involving yourself in traditional networking events, but when you enter a roomful of your peers, you are met with a great opportunity to learn, share your views on industry topics and boost your reputation.

In addition to the cost associated with attending industry conferences, there is also the time factor that makes social networking more desirable. When it comes to traditional networking events, you risk having to pull yourself away from your work for a day or more. Using social media, you can easily send your message to hundreds, if not thousands, of people with the push of a button.

But can you really build, through online networking, the level of trust necessary gain authority in your industry?

When it comes to networking, trust plays a very important role. There is no doubt that you can easily build a good rapport and make connections with people, but the strength and value of those relationships is questionable.

When you attend networking events on behalf of your company and its product or service, you give your business a face and you have a better opportunity to develop genuine trust that you can later bolster online. In fact, I would argue that traditional networking can have a direct influence on your Facebook fans, Twitter followings or LinkedIn connections and, as we all know, this can mean more inbound links, more traffic and more business.

There is no winner when it comes to a face-off between traditional networking vs. social networking. The rise in social media does not mean that business owners should shelve traditional networking strategies. On the other hand, business owners cannot ignore the magnitude of how social media can grow a business.

Balancing both social media for networking and business growth with putting a human face to your business at industry gatherings and networking events, is the only way to truly succeed in this ever-changing market.

It’s easy to get lazy with all of this technology at our fingertips. I know I’m guilty of it. That’s why I’m going to join my local chamber of commerce next month and stop passing up opportunities for traditional networking.

What are your thoughts on the subject? Have you been keeping up with your traditional networking efforts?

9TWENTY9 Media Puts the Finishing Touches on New Social Networking Website

When A-list stylist and handbag designer Emily Wallach needed content for her upcoming social networking project, FlipDenim.com (http://www.FlipDenim.com), she contacted Damon Rallis at 9TWENTY9 Media.

“Emily’s new website is quite unique,” explains Rallis. “She needed content that was not only search engine friendly, but spoke to a very specific target audience.”

The content needed to be light, fun and engaging, while explicitly detailing how users could get the most out of the website.

“This was a tricky project for us,” Rallis says. “Because there is nothing else like it out there, Emily wanted to be sure that users could not only navigate the site easily, but understand the trading process from the very beginning.”

FlipDenim.com is the first online community dedicated to buying, selling and trading previously-owned designer jeans.

According to Wallach, her own closet was teeming with designer jeans that either didn’t fit or no longer matched her style. In today’s economy, rekindling her affair with designer denim jeans would break the bank and, at more than $200 a pop, she found it hard to replace those old jeans, let alone part with them in the first place.

“I love to shop, I hate to waste, I adore my old jeans and I am always looking for ways to pay them forward,” explained Wallach. “That’s why I created FlipDenim.com, because designer denim never dies, unless locked away in a closet, never to be used again.”

Wallach, whose designs have been carried in more than 300 stores worldwide and worn by a slew of celebrities including Kate Hudson, Halle Berry, and Nicole Kidman, says that at FlipDenim.com you can flip your denim and walk away in another great pair for as little as the cost of a sandwich.

 “To say that we are psyched to have worked on such a unique and exciting project with such an important player in the fashion industry would be an understatement,” Rallis says. “I hope that we can continue to work with Emily in the future both on this project and others.”

FlipDenim.com is scheduled to launch in the Fall.

Are Your Press Releases Search Engine-Friendly?

Online press release distribution is a great way to generate sales and leads but, unlike traditional press releases, online press releases must use search engine optimization techniques in order to reach a business's target market. Here are some tips on optimizing your online press releases.

Know Your Keywords and Use Them. Before writing your online press release, make a list of keywords relevant to your business and its target market.

Create An Attention-Grabbing Title. Your press release title is the key to attracting readers, the better it is the more likely you are to get more traffic to your website. Be sure to include at least one keyword in your title for maximum exposure. 

Use Keywords Properly. The summary of your press release should be 250 characters or less and include secondary keywords to optimize weaker keywords for your press release. The body of the press release should be at least 300 words and include 3-4 keywords, including the keyword used in your title. 

Link Your Keywords. Link your important keywords to relevant pages within your website, avoiding the front page.

Choose Your Topic Wisely. The topic of your press release does not need to be stunning to be exciting. The key is to find topics that relate to your business and, more importantly, topics that will be of interest to your target audience.

Juice Your Press Release. Include your company logo for branding and be sure to insert photos, graphics, video links and any other media to maximize the potential of your press release.

Distribute Your Press Release Properly. Dumping your press release into as many submission sites as possible isn't really advantageous. By using reputable press release distribution services, your message will make it to your target audience. By ensuring that your press release is search engine-friendly you have the opportunity to collect a fresh stream of traffic to your website.

Do any other writers out there have tips on optimizing an online press release?

Let us know...

Hello Facebook; Goodbye Google!

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his site’s latest application programming interface (API) update, known as “Open Graph,” at the company’s recent F8 conference – with features that one techno-blogger noted "will make Facebook the central nervous system of the web" – the Internet landscape changed almost immediately, mostly because of its new “Like” button feature.

“The Like button enables users to make connections to your pages and share content back to their friends on Facebook with one click,” Facebook reps said in a recent statement. “Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the button can display personalized content whether or not the user has logged into your site. For logged-in Facebook users, the button is personalized to highlight friends who have also liked the page.”

Social media marketers have had success with social bookmarking applications that have used peer and social networking principles for years, but Facebook’s open graph API buried StumbleUpon and Digg by offering a way to effortlessly take part in the most important social networking website. During his keynote speech, Zuckerberg confirmed that the social networking giant was touting more than 400 million users, up from 200 million just one year earlier.

While Facebook’s popular “Like” button was once just an in-network element, “Open Graph” now allows it to be used anywhere across the Web. Within just one week of its introduction, 50,000 websites had already implemented “Open Graph,” designed to duplicate the existing social media marketing process while freeing the content producer from having to create individual in-network Facebook Pages. It allows the content producer to add semantic tags to any web page that identify it as a particular entity in Facebook's database, and add widgets to the page with which users visiting the site can interact, giving companies the ability to better leverage Facebook’s massive audience.

“We've just introduced an easy way to tell friends that you like what they're sharing on Facebook with one easy click,” said Facebook’s Leah Pearlman.“Wherever you can add a comment on your friends' content, you'll also have the option to click "Like" to tell your friends exactly that: "I like this."

Until now, social media marketing meant investing an inordinate amount of time in building, connecting and maintaining dozens of social networks. The Open Graph API’s “Like” button is a social plug-in is the most useful social media marketing tool to date. Facebook execs explain that their network will travel seamlessly with users across the Web creating what Zuckerberg described as an "instantly personal" experience, making social networking simpler and more effective for the vast majority of users.

Facebook will soon be rooted so deeply into other websites that it will have a reach that Google has only dreamed of. While Google's mission may be to organize the world's information, it does so from the outside. Facebook’s Open Graph API will allow it to become the organizing point for the world’s social interactions online. This is something that is already becoming more valuable to social media marketers than Google's online advertising.

Press Release Writing: How to Write A Headline For Online Publications

Headlines for online stories need to strike a balance between search engine optimization (SEO) and good old fashion tabloid journalism.

I worked in the newspaper industry for more than a decade and, when it came to writing headlines, my main objective was to capture the readers interest so that they would be enticed to read the story below. Now that most of my work is published online, headline writing is a whole different ballgame.

Writers and SEO experts often butt heads on the subject of headlines and titles for stories published online, whether they are press releases, blog posts, or website content page titles.

Writers are trained to create headlines that will appeal to readers and draw them into the story that follows. There is no doubt that SEO experts want the same thing. However, they recognize that if the page on which the story is published doesn’t rank high in the search engines, there will be no readers to draw in.

Web copywriters need to recognize that it is a universally supported SEO technique to place keywords in headlines because search engines give weight to keywords that are in prominent places. In addition, placing keywords as far to the left as possible will give headlines even more of an advantage.

Of course, with my background, there is nothing that turns me off more than a headline that is chunky and unattractive because of keywords. I know that I am not the only one that feels this way. Readers who see out of place keywords in a headline are quick to pass over the story recognizing that the story was likely written for one reason only; to increase search engine ranking.

For writers like myself, headlines for online stories are a double-edge sword; without keywords the story won’t rank, but with too many keywords, the story won’t be read.

Since most of my clients hire me to write copy for online marketing, I have had to learn how to incorporate both the journalistic and the SEO schools of thought, but it isn’t as easy as one would think. The idea is, with each headline, to look at your targeted keyword list and try to work in the key term or phrase that fits most smoothly, even if it isn’t the ideal keyword. In other words, do be too choosy and search for a balance. It will make for the perfect web copy.

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