My friend and colleague Stuart Friedman has many beautiful attributes, and they seem to have come together to produce a remarkable video tribute to a school classmate, who is battling a serious disease.
He posted it on Facebook, but you can see it here:
How can you use social media to bring joy, comfort, and love to family, friends, community, and the world?
I’ve decided to use the 2010 default WordPress theme for my new blog DRIVING MISS SHARI. But I wasn’t happy with the Home page: readers had to scroll through the entire recent article to get to the previous one – and so on and so on.
When you come to SHARISAX IS OUT THERE, you see a thumbnail and a brief description with a clickable link to “Read More” for each post. That was simply a handy feature of this blog’s theme.
I’m not a web developer and depend on a few friends to help me with the back end, but I thought I might try to “do it myself” with a little online help:
**First I posed the question in the WordPress.org Forum: No Response
**Then I posted the question on LinkedIn’s Q & A: The two responders convinced me that I’d never figure it out on my own.
**So I went to my wonderful Australian friend James Hilton who is truly my behind-the-scenes genius.
1. After you create each post, you place your cursor in the position where you want to end the description. Then you click on the “Insert More tag (Alt+Shift+T)” which is just to the right of the spell check on the first row of your edit icons. [Looks like a wide thin rectangle above a boxier shape].
2. Then you scroll down the right sidebar, and you will see a menu item that says “Featured Image.” [It is right below “Post Tags”] Click on “Set featured image” and you will get the same menu screen where you insert photos into the post itself. After selecting your image, be certain to click the instruction below the size selection that says “set featured image.”
VOILA! Your thumbnail is set.
PS If you set the “more tag” after a photo in the introduction of the post, you may not want/need a thumbnail.
PPS Check out DRIVING MISS SHARI and leave a comment on my first post to help me reach my goal of 500 comments. THX
“What to Tweet” articles have been among the most popular on my blog. That’s why I suggested the topic to Michael Cohn, founder and CTO of CompuKol Communications — when he asked me to write a guest post for his very popular social media for business blog.
I’d been reading CompuKol Communication for quite awhile, and a recent article stood out as one I wish I’d written. Michael allowed me to republish it as a Guest Post here: Why your website really needs a blog. And here is the article I wrote for his blog:
Companies that understand the power and potential of Twitter to effectively communicate with their markets, their employees, their communities – and the entire globe – are growing their reputations as industry innovators and category leaders.
Two recent reports show Twitter to be the social tool of choice for businesses. The Burston-Marsteller study showed that 65 of the largest 100 international companies have active Twitter accounts, and 96% of marketers with social media knowledge are using Twitter.
It’s all about Influence and Interaction:
(a) The online population that’s creating the content influencing the rest of the world is on Twitter
(b) Customers prefer Twitter as the mechanism to truly interact with brands and learn more about them.
With Twitter as a communication platform, brands capitalize on speed and brevity to listen to the marketplace, respond to inquiries, resolve issues, build community, and promote their products and services.
Here are 17 suggestions on what your company should Tweet:
1. Announce special offers and sales instantly to a large audience.
2. Write live updates on events like conferences and trade shows. Twitter is a great last minute marketing tool.
3. Provide links to blog posts from your company officers and employees.
4. Highlight URLs to relevant articles from respected industry sources.
5. Retweet [RT] brand followers to show you listen to them and respect their opinions.
6. Offer rewards to customers who Tweet about your brand.
7. Engage in real-time conversations with key influencers to establish your brand as an industry source for bloggers and other media people.
8. Create valuable webinars to generate leads and promote them through Tweets.
9. Post photos & videos from your offices, stores, and warehouses.
10. Ask questions and get opinions. Twitter is like a real-time focus group; it’s great for feedback. This can be especially helpful for market research and product development.
11. Answer questions, especially about your brand. Show you are listening.
12. Set up a Twitter account that acts solely as a Help Desk. Have experts ready 24/7 to respond to inquiries.
13. Share sneak peeks of projects or events in development.
14. Recommend sites and events that your customers might enjoy and benefit from.
15. Comment on industry issues.
16. Congratulate employees on promotions and other achievements.
17. Publicize customer success stories.
Twitter eliminates the middleman and allows brands to both listen and talk directly with their customers. Many companies like Dell, Home Depot, Starbucks, Jet Blue, Whole Foods, and Southwest Airlines – to name just a few – have already developed successful Twitter strategies. Follow them. Listen to them. Engage with them. Learn from them, and then just do it.
Expatriate Coach Anne Egros uses social media to check in back home, especially with LinkedIn — where I met her via a comment
on the guest post by Victoria Ipri:
Anne Egros, Pharm D, is an independent professional coach, based in Brussels, the Capital of Europe and home to international organizations including EU & NATO.
She has been an expatriate for 20 years, working at management levels for Fortune 500 companies in USA, Japan and Europe. She understands the needs and challenges of global leaders and international managers in multicultural environments.
A member of ICF, the International Coach Federation, Anne has always been passionate at inspiring people to become effective multi-cultural team leaders focusing on excellence in getting results and people development across borders.
How Anne got her social media start:
It all began on LinkedIn after an invitation by a Japanese colleague from Tokyo in 2005.
“LinkedIn helped me keep clients overseas and get new ones very rapidly when I moved from Atlanta to Brussels in 2009.”
Other social media sites now fit into her business model:
As an expat who moves to different countries every three to five years, she sees great potential building and maintaining relationships all over the world via online platforms.
“I typically coach individuals abroad who seek support from people who have significant business experience with deep understanding of expat issues both professionally and personally.
“When I post a discussion on LI, people who relate will contact me. Then I offer a complementary coaching session via phone, Skype, or in person.”
Anne opened a Facebook account in 2009, but she shut it down because she didn’t like sharing personal things on a public place. Her Twitter experience began and ended abruptly when she didn’t get it initially. Then she met a business owner who explained how to find followers — and great value. [Twitter is where she found me.]
“I learn a lot by searching by key words, and I love the serendipity and spirit of true networkers who offer meaningful connections. For now, though, Twitter is not generating a lot of traffic to my website. LinkedIn has a much larger ROI, but I’m open to seeing greater rewards from Twitter in the future.”
What philosophies underlie Anne’s practice?
Fitting social media into a typical day’s activities:
“I spend about two hours a day with social media, trying to write one or two blog posts per week and 3-5 discussions per week on LinkedIn.”
How Anne describes her Work Life:
“I love learning new stuff and am an Information Addict. I enjoy making a difference in the lives of others, especially by helping them discover what they really want — and become Masters of their own lives: (1) lighting inner fires and (2) transforming fear and negative self-talk into positive thinking.
What’s a blog carnival anyway? I read about them in a chapter of Patrick Schwerdtfeger’s book Webify Your Business and so I signed up for one. But it didn’t seem like there was much going on, so I posted the question on LinkedIn:
The Best Answer came from Stevie Wilson, a seasoned journalist and editor-in-chief of the popular blog called LA-Story.com. It is about Southern California and Los Angeles as a lifestyle, state of mind and style center: “So no matter where you are in the world, you can live the So. Calif lifestyle by knowing what’s hot in LA!”
Guest Post by Stevie Wilson
A blog carnival is where you have somewhat related blogs/sites — each contributing a post on a specific day to create a list that would be posted on every participating site/blog. I have had experience in 3-4 blog carnivals.
While often blog carnivals are narrow in scope, featuring posts in certain sectors: beauty, fashion, (or both), food, spirits, tech/gadgets or games — others can have a wider range and allow people to be creative and more diverse in their content.
Some of the negatives:
1) Everyone gets some extra content and it’s great to get a diverse audience exposure.
2) You have a chance to test out things and talk to others about what works on these kinds of posts, so that you can learn and tweak your links and blogs.
3) It’s all about the group dynamic.
Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t After all, things happen in your life that might have you missing a post or 3 (a car accident, working late, illness) but a once-a-month participation isn’t enough.
Look at the quality of the blogs, their content, their voices and how you all mesh
**
Here’s one additional insight from Bret Itskowitch [in response to the LinkedIn question]
“A blog carnival is a way to grow/share readership among a group of bloggers writing about a similar topic. I am a travel contributor to a group of Lonely Planet bloggers. Every two weeks someone picks a topic and hosts a carnival on their blog. Other bloggers write and post on the topic, linking to the host. The carnival host writes a broader summary on the topic and includes links to all of the contributing bloggers.”
**
What’s your experience been. The jury is definitely out for me — so far. Please convince me.
FURTHER READING:
I remember way back when soap opera fans were not held in high esteem by me . . . until I had two babies in diapers and appreciated the company of the characters and their many problems.
Many years later I learned that some well-respected literary types wrote a book about the value of soaps after one of them had spent an extended time in the hospital watching the shows and getting hooked.
1. Companies advertise on soaps to reach stay-at-home moms, but the actual audience is a whole lot more diverse.
2. The success of soaps is really all about the writing, the conversation, the engagement, and some “I can’t believe they said/did that!”
3. If viewers get hooked [and become part of the community], they don’t want to miss an episode.
4. The best episodes are “page turners” and fans need to keep up.
5. And the Last Lesson (the primary reason for this post): Viewers will follow the cast from one show to a second one. That’s why I tuned into “Bold and the Beautiful” when characters from “Young and the Restless” traveled from Genoa City to Los Angeles.
So I hope my wonderful subscribers — and all my new readers — will join the conversation on my new blog DRIVING MISS SHARI, which I just began to chronicle my adventures of being Vehicle-less in Suburbia.
Hope to see you here:
One of the treasured opportunities for BNI [Business Networking International] members is the time we get to present an extended Infomercial to our “salesforce,” i.e. our chapter members.
Next week I plan to condense my 2-hour LinkedIn workshop into seven minutes — to provide an outline of tips for filling out the LI profile that is too often neglected by busy careerists.
To get the most from this worksheet, you might want to check out my article 10 steps to build up your LinkedIn profile for maximum findability online.
Use blank lines for your notes.
LinkedIn Profile Worksheet
1. Photo: _____________________________________________________________________
2. Headline: ____________________________________________________________________
3. Update: _____________________________________________________________________
4. Current position[s]: Be certain to use keywords [phrases]
5. Recommendations: ____________________________________________________________
6. Connections: _________________________________________________________________
7. Websites: ____________________________________________________________________
8. Twitter: ______________________________________________________________________
9. Public Profile: _________________________________________________________________
10. ALL IMPORTANT SUMMARY:
√ FIRST PARAGRAPH: Communicate quickly and clearly the type of opportunities you are seeking.
√ SECOND PARAGRAPH: Highlight 3 or 4 key career accomplishments that demonstrate your qualifications. [Don’t use bullet points. Make it a friendly narrative.]
√ THIRD PARAGRAPH: Answer the question: How are you UNIQUE? How are you DIFFERENT?
√ ADD “for more info” line __________________________________________________________
√ ADD common misspellings _________________________________________________________
√ SPECIALTIES: Include ALL the keyword phrases you think people might use to search for someone who does what you do.
Please feel free to add more suggestions to this list in the comment section below. And . . . if you have any questions, please ask.
Meanwhile here’s a bit larger copy of my LI profile if it will give you ideas for enhancing your own:
Twitter Power for Business is an awesome LinkedIn group if you want to hobnob with folks who understand and use the power of the ultra-popular microblogging site to (a) listen, (b) converse, (c) promote, and (d) build profits.
This blog recently featured “What to Tweet to Stand out from the Masses” and I am currently working on the article How to Become a Twitter All-Star Brand.
My research has included a check-in at the Twitter Power for Business group on LinkedIn, where I found a great discussion by Reese Ben-Yaacov.
Reese is the CEO and Founder of Assistant Connect, a Virtual Assistant Business. She has worked as an Executive Administrative Assistant to C-Level Executives for more than ten years and is passionate about the Internet, Emerging Technologies, and Social Media Marketing.
Here are some of her services [for you Social Media Virtual Assistants to think about[
Calendar Management
Travel Management
Relationship Management
Project Management
Human Resources Recruiting
Document Creating and Editing
in addition to: Social Media Marketing Management such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube
Guest Post by Reese Ben-Yaakov
One of the hardest things about marketing on Twitter is that it doesn’t even look like marketing.
In fact, the closer you watch those who have made a success using inbound marketing techniques, you’ll see that it seems that they’re not doing much of anything at all. Sure, they’re talking to people and sharing some great resources, but that can’t be marketing …
But it is marketing – and it’s a powerful kind of reverse-marketing. It’s relatively easy, it’s fun, and it’s really effective.
Looking for ways to tap into this almost effortless style of business promotion? Here are seven easy steps you can follow:
1. Choose Topics Outside Your Niche
As hard as it may be to swallow, you are not your niche. A niche is something you have. But it is not who you are. Choose 5 other things you could possibly Tweet about. On my list are technology, parenting, water safety, and of course the weather here in HOT Jerusalem. Find more opportunities to Tweet and talk about other things than what your business is. Getting people to like you first is a great place to start on Twitter.
2. Define the Personality You Want To Reach
Thanks to David Meerman Scott, we have the concept of buyer persona and a method for applying it to marketing. Thanks to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, we have a tool for getting inside that buyer persona’s mind. It was easy for me to choose ENFPs (Extraverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving) as my target market. They’re the types who get lots of ideas and are natural entrepreneurs but struggle with things like internet marketing implementation. 4 little letters can give you a lot of potential Tweet ideas.
3. Use the Search Button at Least 3 Times Per Day + Tweet at Least 15 New People
Lots of Twitter help articles will say “Join the conversation!” but if the people you’re following don’t seem to engage in conversation and only promote themselves or send out quotes for Re-Tweet bait, what are you supposed to do? That’s where the search button comes in. Search for something you’re interested in. Find someone you’d like to talk to. Then repeat as much as possible. Use your @ function more than anything else. Engage, don’t broadcast.
4. Ask 5 Questions on a Daily Basis
Once you start to find more followers, just ask questions. Will they always get answered? No. But did it cost you a ton of money to ask? Absolutely not. You can’t take it personally if no one answers the first time around. But if you’re focusing on your buyer persona, you get closer to getting inside their mind. You’ll know you’re asking the right questions when you start to get responses. Easy to do, easy to measure.
5. Answer at Least 3 Questions Daily
The fewer questions someone has on their mind, the more at peace they are. Questions, especially ones that don’t get answered, are the things that keep us up at night. Though it might seem extreme to say, it’s very likely that anytime you answer someone’s question via a Tweet, you’re helping them sleep better at night.
6. Send Out 10 Useful or Entertaining Links (But Be Sure To Track!) Every Day
While desktop applications like TweetDeck or Twhirl offer convenient URL shortening, they are not necessarily the best. You’re missing out on one of the best features of Bit.ly and other URL shortening tools like it: click tracking. This is the simplest way to find out if you’re Tweeting things that your Followers actually want to know about. Just sign up for Bit.ly’s service and Tweet from there when sharing articles and blog posts.
7. Share at Least One Blog Post, Article or Video Per Week
There are so many options for connecting your blog posts, articles, videos, and all your content to your social media venues. But self-serving promotional content just doesn’t cut it. Remember the question theory? Use it to your advantage. Think of the questions your target market (or even better, your buyer persona) has and make sure your content answers those questions.
What works on Twitter for you and/or your company? How do you “get what you want” from your Tweets?
Mayo Clinic is opening a Center for Social Media to train other health care organizations to use Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to connect patients and doctors. The new center will run workshops, offer consulting and host conferences.
This article is actually about two topics and one question:
1) How a top U.S. hospital recognizes the power and the benefits of social media
2) How social media learners can keep up with the latest news and trends
and . . .
3) Why do some people/organizations still think social media is a fad?
Mayo Clinic is a not-for-profit medical practice dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of virtually every type of complex illness. Continually featured in traditional media sources as one of the most reputable and advanced organizations in the hospital industry, the Mayo Clinic is advancing its leadership among health care providers by opening this new social media center focusing on health care.
“The real focus is looking for ways to increase the use of social media throughout the practice at Mayo — to provide in-depth information for patients in a much more comprehensive way, and to create connections between researchers, physicians and staff. Up until now we’ve had the equivalent of a person and a half working through the P.R. department, and we want to take that same model to the whole enterprise at Mayo. We’ll have the equivalent of about eight full-time employees, including a medical director,” said Lee Aase, Mayo’s top social media guru.
[Lee’s quote here and below from an interview with Wall Street Journal]
Mayo Clinic’s foray into social media began with podcasting in 2005
Currently, Mayo Clinic has the most popular medical provider channel on YouTube and more than 60,000 “followers” on Twitter, as well as an active Facebook page with well over 20,000 connections. With its News Blog, Podcast Blog and Sharing Mayo Clinic, a blog that enables patients and employees to tell their Mayo Clinic stories.
Mayo has been a pioneer in hospital blogging. MayoClinic.com, Mayo’s consumer health information site, also hosts a dozen blogs on topics ranging from Alzheimer’s to The Mayo Clinic Diet.
Mayo has also used social media tools for internal communications, beginning in 2008 with a blog to promote employee conversations relating to the organization’s strategic plan, and including innovative use of video and a hybrid “insider” newsletter/blog. This employee engagement contributes to Mayo Clinic being recognized among Fortune magazine’s “Best Places to Work.”
Why would a busy doctor want to spend the time to learn how to use YouTube?
“This is building on the interest that we’ve already had. There is immense interest from clinical departments — they want to be able to harness these tools to do their business. We want to create a curriculum that’s scalable and enables us to provide them with training when they want it.” Lee
What’s the goal?
“To help patients. Sometimes that means providing information directly to them, and sometimes it means disseminating information more rapidly to the medical community.” Lee
Social Media ethos: “You share what you are learning”
One of my favorite bloggers Valeria Maltoni wrote about the Mayo Clinic announcement in this post: CONVERSATION AGENT. Among her facts was that only 762 of the more than 5,000 hospitals in the U.S. have some social networking presence. Demand for health-related online information and support is strong and will only be increasing, according to Ed Bennett’s Hospital Social Networking List.
Shel Holtz, hugely respected corporate communication pro/podcaster/social media guru , interviewed Lee Aase for his August 5 podcast: Listen and hear how Mayo Clinic believes that individuals have the right to advocate for their own health care.
And now the $64.000 question: Why do some people/organizations still think social media is a fad?
My business communication adventure has veered onto an exciting new HighWay with my introduction and initiation into BNI, the largest business networking organization in the world.
It all started when I read a LinkedIn request for a SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINER to join the 1st Advantage chapter of BNI in Marin County, California. And the rest, as they say, is history . . .
The culture of BNI and other networking/referral organizations resonates with the supportive, personal, collaborative spirit so important to the community-building value of social media activities — it’s a natural complement. BNI founder Ivan Misner recognized the importance of “my category” in a recent podcast, which you can hear in its entirety at the end of this post.
Below are highlights from his program, to which I have added bits of commentary [° in green italic]
Social Media Do’s and Don’ts: Podcast Highlightsby Ivan Misner
Here are some suggestions on how to use social media effectively.
Brought to you by Ask Ivan Misner.
WordPress is The Bomb!
You read a lot about WordPress on this WordPress blog and you’ll be reading lots more. I’m convinced that WP is the easiest and best way for most of us to do our online publishing, and so does freelance website designer Todd E. Jones. A blogger and a social media nerd, Todd writes a blog that helps small business owners utilize their websites more effectively.
Guest Post by Todd E. Jones
WordPress was originally built to be the framework for blogs. However, over the years, many website designers have begun to understand the power and flexibility it has to built a complete website. Now, website designers all over the world are using WordPress to power their websites from the most basic blog to highly complex websites.
The WordPress framework is very feature-rich. There are many good reasons to build your website on WordPress; however, in this article we are going to focus on three.
SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. Optimization is the act of maximizing one’s effort. SEO is the act of maximizing a website’s visibility effort in the search engines, particularly in the big three: Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Designers and other exports “optimize” websites for the purpose of attaining higher rankings in the search engines to increase the amount of traffic to the website.
The WordPress framework is inherently built to be SEO-friendly. More technical tasks such as adding meta tags to pages and submitting a sitemap to the search engines can be automated easily in the WordPress control panel. WordPress also has an automatic system to contact directories and search engines when your website is updated with a new article or post.
Further, the original WordPress themes are built standards compliant. Standards compliant refers to the web standards that have evolved in the design community and which many of the search engines, such as Google, use to help find websites easier. Google has said in its own documentation that the more standards compliant your website is, the better it will be indexed and crawled by its automated robots, known sometimes as spiders. The result is a higher ranking for your website.
SEO involves a lot of different tasks, but a large part of them are accomplished simply by building your website on WordPress.
CMS stands for content management system or software. Website designers have been using content management software for websites for several years now. A CMS allows the organization to update certain areas of its own website without having to pay additional fees to get the designer to update the website.
Several years ago, when designers started using CMS, the cost was very expensive. However, the initial cost seems to offset the ongoing cost of maintenance by the designer, saving the designer time so that he or she could work on new projects.
WordPress is a CMS by nature. Since it was built for the average user to blog, the framework allows for easy publishing. WordPress also makes it easy to add new pages.
If you can use Microsoft Word, or some other word processor, you can be trained to use WordPress.
In the online publishing world, syndication, or web syndication is powerful. Syndication helps you get your message or your articles in front of a larger number of people. Using the technology RSS, which means Really Simple Syndication, a website is able to share its content with other readers all over the world wide web. It is an automated process.
Some users take advantage of RSS Feeds, as they are called, through sites such as Yahoo Home, Google Home and feed readers like Google Feed Reader. This allows web users to keep up with a variety of websites on a daily basis in one place. There are also desktop feed readers such as RSSOwl.
RSS feeds can be delivered to readers such as mentioned above or to their email inbox through services such as feedburner. RSS feeds give your website syndication and a larger audience.
Another benefit of RSS feeds is the ability to repost your articles via Facebook. Facebook will let you integrate your articles into your profile through the use of RSS feeds giving your articles or posts a wider audience base.
WordPress, has this feature built in its framework. It automatically builds the necessary file and data to syndicate your content. All that has to be done, is make sure that readers know how they can access the RSS Feed. Usually a icon with a link to the feed is sufficient. Further, a website owner can submit his or her feed to other websites like Technorati, which distribute the feed automatically.
WordPress is a powerful, feature-rich framework for building easy-to-publish websites which are well indexed in the search engines.
Add to this its price tag, and it is no wonder business owners all over the world are using WordPress to run their websites. Are you next?
Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a Social Media Phenomenon. He speaks about building online business presence — and WOWS audiences all over the world. I’ve been fortunate to have reported on two of these presentations: Social Media Victories and How to Win Them, Basic Social Media Strategies.
“Today’s professionals understand the internet offers tremendous business opportunities but they lack practical strategies to take action,” says Patrick Schwerdtfeger in Webify Your Business: Internet Marketing Secrets for the Self-Employed
The following Guest Post is one of the chapters from Patrick’s fabulous How-To-Do Internet Marketing book. Each chapter, like the one printed below, gives readers the opportunity to take immediate action and see results quickly.
Guest Post by Patrick Schwerdtfeger [from his book Webify Your Business]
Want to be on page #1 of Google?
Stupid question. Of course you do! Turns out, there are some websites that can quickly put your company right on the first page for searches in your local community, even if you don’t have a website! They include Yelp, CitySearch, Yahoo Local, MerchantCircle, and Google Local among others.
Niche directories that cater to specific verticals [like your industry or even your geographic location] can do an amazing job getting your name in front of qualified prospects, but they are less likely to show up on the front page of Google.
Yahoo Local, CitySearch, and Yelf are different. They don’t necessarily attract hordes of Internet users who are looking only for your particular service. On the contrary, they offer listings on a wide variety of topics, but they’re such huge platforms that they tend to rank high on the search engines.
Here’s the strategy: Visit all these websites and sign up for an account. By doing so, you’re simply registering your existence in their database. Then, once your account is created, get some of your past clients to write reviews of your business on those platforms.
The best example is Yelp because they are specifically designed to capture reviews from the public. It’s very easy to create an account and start accumulating reviews. Once you have a few (and hopefully they’re all glowing), your existence on Yelp will start showing up in Google searches.
A client of mine was frustrated trying to get more clients online. We set up a Yelp account and had three of his past clients write testimonials for him. Now, when people search for his service (which is garbage removal) in his city, those Yelp reviews show up on the first page (while his own website is on page four or five).
In fact, of the 10 listings that come on the first page, he’s mentioned in four of them! His listing on Yahoo Local comes up (listing #4) followed by MerchantCircle (listing #5), CitySearch (listing #7) and Yelp (listing #9).
Note that his own website is not listed on the first page, but his company dominates the top search results!
That’s the opportunity these websites provide. They’re such large platforms that they almost always come up near the top. Some are free. Others charge a fee but the online visibility is well worth the investment.
Yelp deserves a few more comments. While positive reviews are the inevitable goal, you want to be a bit careful about it. Getting reviews from people who aren’t already active on Yelp looks suspicious and is sometimes referred to as “gaming” Yelp.
When asking past clients to write reviews for you, ask them if they are already using Yelp. If so, their review will definitely help you. If not, you’re better off getting them to write reviews on other platforms like Yahoo Local or MerchantCircle. Leave Yelp to active Yelpers.
All of these websites allow you to leverage their impressive search engine rankings for your own benefit. Don’t let that opportunity pass you by.
Most people believe the only way to show up on Google is to have an incredible website that is perfectly optimized for the search engines. That’s not true. There are other ways — strategies that are more effective and less expensive than trying to build a huge website all on your own (or hiring someone else to do it).
The easiest way to find all the various platforms is to search for your industry keywords and look at the domain names at the bottom of each listing. By looking at the URL as well as the description text, you can usually identify the platforms that host profiles for other competitors.
To get you started, look for listings with Yelp, CitySearch or Yahoo in the URL. Those will give you a good idea of the usual structure, making it easy to find other websites you can target as well. I recommend doing this every month or so, just to make sure you’ve taken advantage of all the opportunities available in your industry.
These are simple strategies that only take a few hours to pursue. The best part is that you can easily see what your competition is doing, just by looking at the search results in your field. By consistently targeting all the platforms others are using, you’ll quickly populate the internet with positive references of your business and that exposure can bring you the online customers you’re looking for.
Another advantage is that these websites get indexed by Google regularly. That means you can start seeing results quickly. I recently created a page on MerchantCircle and found the listing on Google within 30 minutes.
Get started! Done properly, you can be on the first page of Google in short order.
