dswiese's posterous http://dswiese.posterous.com Most recent posts at dswiese's posterous posterous.com Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:05:06 -0700 Great stats when selling local search http://dswiese.posterous.com/great-stats-when-selling-local-search http://dswiese.posterous.com/great-stats-when-selling-local-search
Amplify’d from blog.hubspot.com

5 Google Local Stats Every Marketer Should Know

1. Google Maps usage is 40 percent mobile

2. Google Maps has 150 million mobile users

3. Google GPS saves drivers 2 years everyday with route around traffic directions

4. Google Hotpot currently has 3 million ratings

5. 20 percent of Google searches are for local information

Read more at blog.hubspot.com

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Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:23:05 -0800 Why you need a Google Places listing http://dswiese.posterous.com/why-you-need-a-google-places-listing http://dswiese.posterous.com/why-you-need-a-google-places-listing

Yet another great write up from Lisa at Outspoken Media from SMX and why you need to have your listing claimed and provided the right information.

Amplify’d from outspokenmedia.com

Importance of Local Search

Google Place pages are viewed millions of times a day, that’s nearly 20 percent of all searches on Google. When you look at mobile devices, that number gets even higher.  Eighty percent of consumers are searching online at least weekly.  55 percent of searchers in 2010 went online to make a purchase. Local search site share has grown 20 percentage points since 2007 for Moving and Storage categories. 64 percent of local business searchers expect the business results to be within 15 miles of their location.

Read more at outspokenmedia.com

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Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:24:18 -0800 Social Marketing vs. Email Marketing: Is It War? http://dswiese.posterous.com/social-marketing-vs-email-marketing-is-it-war http://dswiese.posterous.com/social-marketing-vs-email-marketing-is-it-war

Just a great article on how to always keep a mix of tools in your marketing toolbox

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Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:16:04 -0800 3 Rules for Great Content Curation http://dswiese.posterous.com/3-rules-for-great-content-curation http://dswiese.posterous.com/3-rules-for-great-content-curation

great find from @nolandhoshino

Amplify’d from blog.hubspot.com
1. Find the Best Content - Curation only works for a business if the person who creates the content also understands the industry extremely well. Industry knowledge enables content marketers to become reliable filters for the best content and information. The more content you discard, the more relevant the final curated content will be.

2. Add Value - It is often not enough to simply curate content for use on a business blog or for sharing through a social media channel. Be sure to add commentary and insights that help to add more value to the curated content. This added insight will make the content even more interesting and relevant to the reader.

3. Attribute - Just like writing a blog post or creating other forms of online content, it is critical that you properly attribute the original source of the curated content. This attribution is typically done by providing clear links to the original content on the creator's website.
Read more at blog.hubspot.com

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Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:48:48 -0800 Help your local small business http://dswiese.posterous.com/help-your-local-small-business http://dswiese.posterous.com/help-your-local-small-business

Great new twitter project to help out small businesses by reviewing them online.

Amplify’d from getlisted.org

Announcing “REVIEW WEDNESDAY” (#RWX)

Spread the word about your favorite small businesses online and help them get more customers!

You've probably heard of "Follow Friday," a Twitter phenomenon where community members tag their tweets with #FF as a way to recommend new people for their to follow.

Read more at getlisted.org

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Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:52:16 -0800 Get more social media followers http://dswiese.posterous.com/get-more-social-media-followers http://dswiese.posterous.com/get-more-social-media-followers

A quick snip from a larger article at Hubspot on ways to get more followers, and the three below are the ones that really struck me as quick simple things for small business owners to leverage existing contacts and systems they are already familiar with.

Amplify’d from blog.hubspot.com

3. Get Employees to Follow

Tell your employees to follow/like/subscribe to your social media profiles. People are more likely to follow pages that already have some sort of following, so your employees will help build your initial numbers.

4. Invite Partners, Vendors, Clients, and Customers

Send a friendly and personalized email to anyone you have a business relationship with, including partners, vendors, clients, and customers, letting them know about your social media profiles.

5. Email Signature

Add links to your company’s social media profiles in your company email signature. Create a signature template that includes these links and encourage your coworkers to use this signature as well.

Read more at blog.hubspot.com

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Mon, 27 Dec 2010 08:01:04 -0800 SMB and the need for social media http://dswiese.posterous.com/smb-and-the-need-for-social-media http://dswiese.posterous.com/smb-and-the-need-for-social-media

Great post from Lisa Barone on how small business owners may be getting passed by social media savvy customers, and not even realize it.

Another set of finding from the post:

81 percent say it’s important for businesses to respond to a post.
78 percent want to see promotions.
74 percent want regular posts.
66 percent want to see pictures.

This is what your potential and current customers are coming to expect and will find a business that responds and engages with them. Lets make it your business!

Amplify’d from smallbiztrends.com

If you’re a small business owner and you don’t think your customers are spending time on social media, I’d really encourage you to get out of your storefront and have a look around–because there’s an entire world passing you by. Earlier this year, Nielsen reported that the world now spends more than 100 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites, equating to 22 percent of all time online, or one in every four and a half minutes.

Read more at smallbiztrends.com

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Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:39:53 -0800 Creative Business Cards http://dswiese.posterous.com/creative-business-cards http://dswiese.posterous.com/creative-business-cards

From Noland::

I came across this article on Noupe and thought I would share it with everyone.

One of my favorite things to do when meeting people at meetups or other places of interest is getting their business cards. Those that work for a company may not have a choice in the design ( like my business cards) of their cards but for those that do. It can tell a lot about a person. For those that have the standard themes from sites such as Vista Print (don't get me wrong, they are nice cards and are good for start up companies trying to save money) than those that design their own or have a designer create one for them.

I am not business card designer, but I want to give it a crack and am working on a couple of design ideas that will hopefully work out. It's just hard trying to figure what info is needed and what is not...

Amplify’d from www.noupe.com
Your business card is the slogan of your business. The more creative, unique and appealing your business card is, the more it will help you to move forward and give your business a great enhancement.

A few months ago, we had published a post about some quite unusual business card ideas and designs. This is yet another post on more bizarre and creative business cards — a collection of more than 70 business cards designs to enhance your inspiration!

Creative Business Cards

Visiting44 in 60+ Bizarre and Creative Business Cards

Visiting60 in 60+ Bizarre and Creative Business Cards

Visiting46 in 60+ Bizarre and Creative Business Cards

Visiting12 in 60+ Bizarre and Creative Business Cards

Visiting48 in 60+ Bizarre and Creative Business Cards

Visiting20 in 60+ Bizarre and Creative Business Cards

Visiting21 in 60+ Bizarre and Creative Business Cards

Visiting39 in 60+ Bizarre and Creative Business Cards

Visiting50 in 60+ Bizarre and Creative Business Cards

Visiting71 in 60+ Bizarre and Creative Business Cards
See more at www.noupe.com

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Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:39:13 -0800 Driving long term traffic to your site http://dswiese.posterous.com/driving-long-term-traffic-to-your-site http://dswiese.posterous.com/driving-long-term-traffic-to-your-site

Great article on how to keep content current and what you write can keep bringing people back to your site.
I like to tell clients that if you get the same question more than 3 times, then write a blog post. If that blog post gets re-written more than 2 times. Write a static page on your site to target that audience.

Amplify’d from www.wolf-howl.com

Evergreen content is content written with the goal of driving traffic to a website for a long period of time. In some cases, such as when the content is historical and will never change (something like the presidency of Zachary Taylor), the content can live for the life of the website with little or no updating. In other cases, the content may have a long lifespan but must be updated every few years. An example of this would be something like “year end tax strategies for seniors”, which changes every few years as the tax laws change.

Read more at www.wolf-howl.com

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Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:00:05 -0800 How to use social media right: A step by step plan by @chrisbrogan http://dswiese.posterous.com/how-to-use-social-media-right-a-step-by-step http://dswiese.posterous.com/how-to-use-social-media-right-a-step-by-step

This article is about online promotions, but the principles can applied to many kinds of social media strategies.

Amplify’d from www.chrisbrogan.com
This article is about online promotions, but the principles can applied to many kinds of social media strategies.

Vintage storefront

If you want my first steps in how to set up the mechanics of an online promotion (or at least the simplified version I’m willing to explain for free), I do the following: plan, create, launch, rework, conclude. I’ll walk you through it at the high level.

The Plan

The parts of my plan are: goals and resources, mechanics, content, contingencies. I write out notes on the following.

  1. Determine my goal: sales, sign-ups, links, awareness, etc.
  2. Determine my target: what’s a win? (Write out metrics accordingly).
  3. Determine my area of approach: where are the people I want to reach.
  4. Determine my resources: who can help.
  5. Design my site or static resources.
  6. Determine the tools I’ll use and in which areas.
  7. Decide the mix of ads and marketing (PPC/SEO stuff, placement, and then social media).
  8. Sketch out the content for all of this (ad copy, creative, blog posts, social networking stories, blogger outreach angles).
  9. List my potential outreach resources (and develop a blogger outreach plan).
  10. Write up contingency planning and error handling.

Create

If I’m going to use the online world, I want to do more than make ads and banners. I work on blog posts, including text and video and audio versions. I also seek out interview opportunities and other PR-like opportunities to stretch out the experience. I also sketch out what I think the various social media channels and email marketing will look like. For example, if it’s going to be something we promote via Twitter, what are our angles? How will we get people interested? That’s part of the “create” phase for me, though it always changes as we engage in the conversations. Blogger outreach is also part of the “create” phase, because it’s important to be sure that the story you’re hoping to tell aligns with the bloggers you’d like to have work on the project.

Launch

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. This is the execution of the plan. I’ve drawn a little simple graphic to show you some of what I think about when I do online promotions with social media.

A simplified plan for online promotions

I create different short URLs for the various places where I promote, so that I know which ones drove what amount of traffic. If you do blogger outreach, it’s cool to give each blogger their own code, so that you can track who pulled what. I keep that all on a spreadsheet, so I can remember where I put which. This also helps me graph out who spread things the furthest. If I see a blogger take a short URL across Twitter, Facebook, their blog, YouTube, and wherever else, I know that the person is an excellent sneezer for future projects.

At launch is where we execute the bigger plans. What comes next is usually where the most value-add can be derived.

Rework

Plans aren’t bulletproof. Things change. Sometimes, timing is off. Other times, someone doesn’t promote as much as you’d hoped (I certainly don’t always deliver as much as some folks would wish). Whatever the case, you should always have a “rework” phase in your plans so that you can adjust your tactics and better deliver on your strategy. I earn my paycheck in the rework section, because no plan ever goes off without a hitch.

Conclude

In this stage of the promotion, you do a lot of thanking. Thank your blogger outreach partners. Thank the PR people who helped you place stories. Thank those who tweeted out the promotion (or at least the ones who really pushed it hard).

You also work through all the particulars of counting up your efforts versus your targets, your metrics, and checking around to see how things really moved or didn’t move the needle. You write out the parts of the plan that worked well, so that you never lose “that thing that worked so well” that seems to get lost in the aftermath. You also keep track of any names of dissenters and/or potential sources of negative pushback, so that you can try and learn from what you could’ve done better (and so you know where your opposition might come from next time).

Another note into the conclude phase: keep an eye on the competition for the next few months. See what, if any, of your promotions gets copied by their team. It’s not like you do anything particular with this, but it’s worth noting.

Your Mileage May Vary

The parts I didn’t write about as much involved the whole SEO/PPC, keywords, etc, part of the story. I don’t work as much on that part of promotions, and when I do, I tend to integrate my work with what people have already done (so I don’t often start it from scratch). There are much better blogs than mine covering that part of promotions, so I didn’t cover it in as much detail.

You might have more success in one platform over another. Maybe Facebook is your favorite. Maybe it’s MySpace. Maybe it’s Orkut. Don’t let my notes and ideas cloud your efforts to find where people are doing what they do. LinkedIn might be the ideal spot for your efforts, and then there’d be a whole part of your plan to address groups, network status, LinkedIn Answers, and other tactics. You can adjust these ideas to fit your reality.

Any Questions?

How else can I be helpful? What did I miss? What’s working well for you?

See more at www.chrisbrogan.com

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Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:40:19 -0800 Local Business - Mac Pac http://dswiese.posterous.com/local-business-mac-pac-0 http://dswiese.posterous.com/local-business-mac-pac-0

Great reason to buy locally, and having bought several systems and numerous other items, I can honestly say they are a great company to support.

Amplify’d from www.macpac.com

When you spend your money with a local retailer instead of a national one (say your local Apple Specialist instead of WalMart or BestBuy or an Apple Store) EVERY DOLLAR YOU SPEND stays in the local economy SEVEN TIMES LONGER than if you had bought that item from a national chain.

Read more at www.macpac.com

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Mon, 13 Dec 2010 11:27:04 -0800 Local Business - Mac Pac http://dswiese.posterous.com/local-business-mac-pac http://dswiese.posterous.com/local-business-mac-pac

Great reason to buy locally, and having bought several systems and numerous other items, I can honestly say they are a great company to support.

Amplify’d from www.macpac.com

When you spend your money with a local retailer instead of a national one (say your local Apple Specialist instead of WalMart or BestBuy or an Apple Store) EVERY DOLLAR YOU SPEND stays in the local economy SEVEN TIMES LONGER than if you had bought that item from a national chain.

Read more at www.macpac.com

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Wed, 01 Dec 2010 17:06:12 -0800 Start you small business Facebook Promotions http://dswiese.posterous.com/start-you-small-business-facebook-promotions http://dswiese.posterous.com/start-you-small-business-facebook-promotions

This is great news to small business owners that may not have the dollar resources to invest in a previously needed ad campaign, but may have a great product or feature they can give away.

Amplify’d from www.allfacebook.com

Approved IconThis morning we were forwarded an email from a Facebook sales representative which suggested that new Facebook Promotions guidelines will soon be released. In contrast to before, where promotions would need to be explicitly approved, promotions will no longer need prior written approval from Facebook.

While the email claims that the promotions must still follow the company’s Promotions Guidelines (found here), the changes have not yet been reflected in those guidelines. We’ve reached out to Facebook for confirmation, however it would seem strange that this Facebook sales representative would misrepresent the new changes. Here’s is the complete email that was sent from a sales representative:

Read more at www.allfacebook.com

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Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:39:14 -0800 WordPress security upgrade http://dswiese.posterous.com/wordpress-security-upgrade http://dswiese.posterous.com/wordpress-security-upgrade

While its great to get these reminders, unless you remember to login to your admin panel and the ones you may be responsible, you can be left behind.
This is the main reason I steer my clients to use a managed solution that gives all the flexibility of the WordPress.org platform, and the auto upgrade function.

Amplify’d from wordpress.org

WordPress 3.0.2 is available and is a mandatory security update for all previous WordPress versions. Haiku has become traditional:

Read more at wordpress.org

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Wed, 24 Nov 2010 10:33:12 -0800 Old School Business Building for Social Media http://dswiese.posterous.com/old-school-business-building-for-social-media http://dswiese.posterous.com/old-school-business-building-for-social-media

I think that this is one of the biggest downfalls of social media, and one area that plain "good for the customer" customer service needs to come back and can be used in the line space.

Amplify’d from socialmediatoday.com
  1. Engage and Build Relationships. It’s not about selling your products and services but building relationships. To build relationships you need to create followers or fans of your brand, otherwise known as those who “Like” your page and content. Facebook’s Wall element provides a perfect opportunity to engage your visitors in 2-way conversations. Status updates can engage your clients by providing value as well as direct visitors to answer questions, post their comments and share their photos and videos.
Read more at socialmediatoday.com

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Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:21:01 -0800 Groupon too big for small businesses ? http://dswiese.posterous.com/groupon-too-big-for-small-businesses http://dswiese.posterous.com/groupon-too-big-for-small-businesses

While Groupon is obviously the biggest player at the moment. There are possibly smaller regional offerings he could probably look into.
Also, the decision to base an entire marketing schedule on a single Groupon, while attractive, is probably not the best choice.

Amplify’d from mashable.com

Yonke believes he was overlooked because of the small stature of his business. He points to the fact that the featured deal running in Phoenix today is for Coldwater Creek, a national retailer with a much more prominent brand name. He says, “I get it … they [Groupon] can do a featured deal for the Gap and make $11 million in one day.”

Read more at mashable.com

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Thu, 11 Nov 2010 11:59:47 -0800 Real Estate Hunters Turn to Mobile [CHART] http://dswiese.posterous.com/real-estate-hunters-turn-to-mobile-chart http://dswiese.posterous.com/real-estate-hunters-turn-to-mobile-chart

All the more reason to integrate QR codes, mobile ready web sites and other tools to increase engagement

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