Social Web Tips

Now if you are wondering what social bookmarking sites are, they are the ones which send you traffic before even Google or any search engine does. If you use it the right way, then you can get thousands of people to your site very quickly. But don’t over do bookmarking. Start slowly and then make the process more efficient.

Social bookmarking sites allow you create a user profile where you can store your bookmarks or the votes you gave for any site. You can also add friends to your profile and talk to them. Few social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg allows you to ask for votes through something called the “Shoutout”.

Here are some of the best social bookmarking/voting sites:

Digg: Digg is one of the biggest social voting sites and it has a very large number of people. Not all type of posts do well in Digg. If your site is about technology, there are more chances of your story to become famous and hence get you more traffic. If you have a site which is about making money, then it is a little tough to get your site famous there. But if your story becomes popular in Digg, you will receive a minimum of 10,000 visitors and you might even get 75,000 visitors if your story is about Apple iPod or Mac computer.

StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon is a site which can send traffic to your site no matter which niche your site belongs to. Even four votes can get you 100 visitors which is not possible in Digg. StumbleUpon has the potential to send 10,000 visitors to your site if your article is voted by many people.

Del.icio.us: Del.icio.us is a site which has the ability to send targeted visitors to your site. The traffic from Del.icio.us is same like StumbleUpon and it will even send you traffic long term.

There are many more social bookmarking sites and the above are the best ones. Check the previously posted chart which will help you choose the best social bookmarking sites.

Have you heard of Craigslist.com? If not you could be missing a FREE opportunity to post classified ads throughout the nation.

 

Whether you are a seller interested in selling a one-time product, a small business owner with many products or services to sell, or any entrepreneur or marketer — if you aren’t using Craigslist, you are missing a valuable opportunity to drive hoards of traffic to your site.

 

Now you want to know, “What is Craigslist?” Haven’t you heard of it? Perhaps you have, especially if you bought this guide!

 

For many, the ““List”” is a community website that uses Web 2.0 technology. This website, like many others of its kind, focuses on providing users the ability to build an online community. Serving more than twenty million users each month, Craigslist.com is among the highest-ranking sites on the Web today.

 

What does this mean to you? And how can you use Craigslist to benefit you?

 

What Is Craigslist?

Most community forums provide a place for people to chat, get to know each other, or share common interests. Craigslist is unique in that while it does offer a forum, it is also a place where people can promote and sell. Craigslist allows users to post classified ads to a community bulletin board. Most users can place ads free, although there are charges for certain services in certain locations.

 

The board on Craigslist.com hosts millions of ads and has billions of visitors every year. Sounds pretty exciting. As more and more people turn to the Web for their purchases, the ““List”” is rapidly becoming one of the most important places people bookmark.

 

Remember, most ads placed on Craigslist are free. Even when you do have to pay for ads, usually you will pay far less than you would if you paid for an advertisement in a local paper (or national one). And, more and more people are using the Net to find what they need, whether they want to find a job, a new home, a new car or anything else.

 

by Todd Mintz

David Mihm is more than just an SEMpdx Schwag Ho. He is one of the top experts in the ever-growing specialty of Local Search Optimization and he focuses his consultancy on helping small business clients generate online revenue in their respective marketplaces. His Mihmorandum blog is a "mandatory add" to the feedreader of anybody remotely interested in the Local SEO niche.

David is Portland's newest SEO transplant (...plenty of room for more of y'all to move here BTW...) and on the eve of his appearance at SMX Local & Mobile, he agreed to answer questions on topics on which he is definitely one of the pre-eminent experts.

1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.

(I usually give a stock answer here, which is on my "About" page, but I'll try to branch out with this one a little bit J .)

My fascination with SEO started way back in 2000, when I launched a college basketball webpage on my Williams College student webspace. I had started the page just to give my buddies and myself something to banter about over IM and email, and all of a sudden out of the blue I get an email from a random guy telling me I'd made a mistake in something I'd written.

He told me he found my site because I was ranking #2 on Yahoo for "NCAA Tournament Predictions." Amazed, I started to investigate a little bit more about why that was happening--Title tags, meta keywords, etc. but it remained a hobby (obviously, I was still in school).

In February 2005, after I'd tried graduate school and a couple of other "career paths," I got an email from a New York Times writer and a call from a producer for Stephen A. Smith. Within a couple of weeks, I had a front-page feature in the Times and an appearance on ESPN, thanks to my search engine presence.

So that experience proved to me the incredible potential that the web held, beyond just design, which I'd been interested in since high school, and I decided to pursue it full-time. And today I run my own web design and SEO shop in Portland, Oregon .

2) There were a lot of diverse opinions given in your Local Search Rankings Guide. Do you think local search will be easier to define and measure as time goes on?

Yes and no. I think there will be more agreement on the ranking factors once the Local algorithms start to settle down a little bit (if people think Google is mixing up the organic SERPs these days, they should pay attention to the results in the 10-pack!) and a broader set of search marketers get more and more experience with optimizing sites specifically for Local.

But as I said in some of my comments, the relative importance of each factor seems to vary pretty widely depending on your industry and level of competition. A big-city hotel, for example, where there are a lot of signals for Google and Yahoo to consider, proximity to centroid doesn't matter very much, and things like inbound anchor text and review quantity seem to matter more. But a plumber in Hays, Kansas, is probably going to do fine just by locating her office close to downtown and getting a couple of profiles that validate her information on Superpages and Insiderpages, for example.

3) My friend @ matthewjbrown twittered me the name of a local BBQ restaurant and when I looked at the comments, I was very impressed at how the owner actively engaged each negative reviewer. How can you convince small business to monitor and participate in relevant online conversations?

For small business owners, marketing decisions seem to come down to two main questions: how much time am I going to have to spend on it, and how much money can I make from it? They're incredibly busy running their business, so they need to prioritize what they spend their time and money on. If they're lucky, they may have a part-time marketing "executive" but rarely is there someone in-house responsible for marketing.

Obviously, the best incentive would be to show a measurable ROI in terms of web traffic, foot traffic, or revenue, based on other business owners' participation. The difficulty in making that connection in this case is that participation might not *make* you any money, but it might be something you need to do to keep from *losing* money.

So I'd show them a few concrete examples like the one you cited, and these great articles about the power of user reviews: two by search industry pros Matt McGee and Greg Sterling, and one terrific run-down in the San Francisco Chronicle.

4) What criteria should a small / local business use in deciding where best to place their online advertising budget?

Each business's needs are different, so this is a little bit of a tough question.

I'd think first and foremost about how much time you want to spend doing things yourself vs. how much you're willing to pay someone else to do them for you. Especially in Local Search, because the level of search engine competition is generally a little lower, there are a lot of things you can do yourself, if you know the right places to look and sites to target.

So if you're a DIY-er, I'd say your best bet is to schedule a site review and personalized consultation for a couple hundred dollars with a respected Local Search expert like Mike Blumenthal or Miriam Ellis and get his/her opinion about what your business needs. He or she will tell you the low-hanging fruit that you can grab yourself, and offer services where he/she thinks you'll get the most value from his/her expertise.

If you're a delegator, and/or have a little bit larger budget, I'd still schedule that consultation. But then you can also consider some additional options like signing up for a listing with Localeze, getting a premium listing on some high-traffic sites like Yelp or Citysearch, etc. You might also consider paying an employee or a contractor to blog on behalf of your business, if you don't have the time or the inclination to do that yourself. (See my answer to question #7 for more.)

5) Should a small business with a limited budget even bother with having a website? Could resources be better used elsewhere if a "suck" website is all they can afford?

Greg Sterling hosted an interesting discussion about this very topic on his blog just last month. I come down on the side of each business having a website of its own. That could be just as simple as having a landing page with that business's offline contact information and an email address.

Every business should have its own destination online. Even if they don't intend to build it out in the short-term, it's important not to be dependent on other "free" profile websites...who knows when they won't be free any more, when they'll require you to display advertising, etc.

These days, it's so easy to register a domain name and get set up with a reasonably snazzy-looking Wordpress blog with places like Dreamhost, using a templated Theme, that there's no financial excuse not to make that initial step.

6) This John Andrews post about mobile ads made me curious to get your opinion on how mobile search and local search might converge.

I think John's on the right track there. People on mobile devices aren't typically looking for a "rich" user experience. They're looking for information FAST , that they can use to contact a business right from their phone, or at the very least remember to check out in more detail once they're at a laptop or a desktop. The screen is smaller, so there should be more text and fewer graphics.

That's why I think we've seen Google and Yahoo integrate their 10-packs and 3-packs the way they have. Business information like address and phone is available right there , at the very top of the search results, without even clicking through to the website. And there are a lot of businesses listed Locally that don't even HAVE websites.

Some of the stuff that companies in Japan are doing with in-store coupon codes being served right to your phone via a text message is pretty fascinating, too. I think we'll start to see more of that kind of tracking/promotion in the States as a way to drive offline business via mobile. Offline and mobile will continue to reinforce each other, especially for retail stores dependent on a lot of foot traffic.

7) How can small business effectively engage with social media? What social media should they engage with?

HyperLocal blogging is definitely #1. Find out who the top bloggers in your area are (to get started, just do a search for "Portland, Oregon blog" or similar), read their stuff, and start to make comments on it (perhaps mentioning your phone number or address if it's appropriate--see #9). Write about events and other non-competitive businesses in your area and provide some credibility for yourself by demonstrating your expertise and how you stay on top of current trends in your industry.

As you know, I'm also a HUGE fan of Twitter, and I think it's probably the easiest kind of Social Media to understand, because the conversations are so direct.

Research your community and your industry with Summize. See what people in your city are talking about & follow them. See what people in your industry from around the world are talking about. Create content on your own blog or promotions on your own website that you think would interest them, and promote it on Twitter. Those kinds of connections lead to visibility for your own blog and can really help you hone your business messaging and positioning.

On Twitter, there's no such thing as a "power account," which is critical to success on Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. All the interaction is real, and if you are following the right people for your company or your business, and putting out content they like, your visibility, notoriety (and incoming links) can skyrocket.

8) Small businesses are the easiest prey for online search marketing "predators". How can they best protect themselves?

Say no to anyone who emails you or calls you soliciting their services. Seriously. Take down their information and do some investigating. Very few reputable SEO / SEM shops feel the need to troll for business because they've already got a steady growth in their customer base through word-of-mouth or search engine traffic of their own.

If someone refers you to a provider, search for their business name and look at the first three pages of results to see if anyone is making negative comments about them. Look at their own websites, look at some representative clients. If there's any question about their ethics, move on to another firm.

Beyond that, the best way to combat predators is to become educated about search engine marketing yourself. Teach yourself the basics of SEO and SEM so that you can spot a shyster who's trying to pull a fast one. SEOmoz's Beginner's Guide and Aaron Wall's SEObook are great, inexpensive places to start.

So is attending an SEMpdx event--or similar events for the group in your area. You'll generally get high-quality referrals, and meet high-quality practitioners, at events like these.

9) What action items can a small business perform if they read your " Citation Is The New Link" blog post and decided that they needed to better themselves in that area?

The #1 priority for all businesses that have Local customers should be claiming their listing at Google and Yahoo.

Beyond that, take a look at who is ranking well in the Local algorithm and specifically look at the 'Web Pages' tab within their own listings. You'll start to get a sense of the kinds of sites Google is considering as relevant to businesses like yours. Yahoo pulls from a similar set.

Sign up explicitly with your address and phone number for sites that are showing up frequently underneath those tabs for multiple businesses.

Localeze and UniversalBusinessListing.org are great places to syndicate your business information as well.

And just like real estate, "Location, location, location." Google in particular seems really big on citations from blogs whose geography it can pin down definitively. So you can get a lot more high-quality citations from HyperLocal blogs in your area, as I've already mentioned.

10) Please talk about online reputation management in a small business context.

Online reputation management goes hand-in-hand with Local optimization. The overarching strategy of ORM, as I understand it anyway, is to push negative search results further down the search result page by inflating the value of positive or neutral results. How does one do that? By creating profiles across a number of social media sites and industry platforms, getting mentioned in local press and online media.

Guess what--all of these positive or neutral search results that are pushing down the negative mentions are likely going to count as citations in the Local algorithm. So you get bang for your buck both organically AND Locally.

But unlike larger companies, smaller businesses also need to bear in mind reviews across a mushrooming number of portals that get a lot of traffic in their own right. Yelp, Google, Yahoo, Citysearch, MerchantCircle, InsiderPages, TripAdvisor, just to name a few. I don't see an analogous situation for larger businesses, except maybe in the tech and auto spaces where there are a ton of popular, high-trafficked review sites specifically focused on products in these verticals.

It doesn't help that companies like Yelp are putting up such high barriers to engagement by business owners. It's a tough situation -- small businesses have to work twice as hard as larger businesses to manage their online reputation, with fewer resources.

Free White Paper: How to Optimize for Google
A free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds.

by Todd Mintz

David Mihm is more than just an SEMpdx Schwag Ho. He is one of the top experts in the ever-growing specialty of Local Search Optimization and he focuses his consultancy on helping small business clients generate online revenue in their respective marketplaces. His Mihmorandum blog is a "mandatory add" to the feedreader of anybody remotely interested in the Local SEO niche.

David is Portland's newest SEO transplant (...plenty of room for more of y'all to move here BTW...) and on the eve of his appearance at SMX Local & Mobile, he agreed to answer questions on topics on which he is definitely one of the pre-eminent experts.

1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.

(I usually give a stock answer here, which is on my "About" page, but I'll try to branch out with this one a little bit J .)

My fascination with SEO started way back in 2000, when I launched a college basketball webpage on my Williams College student webspace. I had started the page just to give my buddies and myself something to banter about over IM and email, and all of a sudden out of the blue I get an email from a random guy telling me I'd made a mistake in something I'd written.

He told me he found my site because I was ranking #2 on Yahoo for "NCAA Tournament Predictions." Amazed, I started to investigate a little bit more about why that was happening--Title tags, meta keywords, etc. but it remained a hobby (obviously, I was still in school).

In February 2005, after I'd tried graduate school and a couple of other "career paths," I got an email from a New York Times writer and a call from a producer for Stephen A. Smith. Within a couple of weeks, I had a front-page feature in the Times and an appearance on ESPN, thanks to my search engine presence.

So that experience proved to me the incredible potential that the web held, beyond just design, which I'd been interested in since high school, and I decided to pursue it full-time. And today I run my own web design and SEO shop in Portland, Oregon .

2) There were a lot of diverse opinions given in your Local Search Rankings Guide. Do you think local search will be easier to define and measure as time goes on?

Yes and no. I think there will be more agreement on the ranking factors once the Local algorithms start to settle down a little bit (if people think Google is mixing up the organic SERPs these days, they should pay attention to the results in the 10-pack!) and a broader set of search marketers get more and more experience with optimizing sites specifically for Local.

But as I said in some of my comments, the relative importance of each factor seems to vary pretty widely depending on your industry and level of competition. A big-city hotel, for example, where there are a lot of signals for Google and Yahoo to consider, proximity to centroid doesn't matter very much, and things like inbound anchor text and review quantity seem to matter more. But a plumber in Hays, Kansas, is probably going to do fine just by locating her office close to downtown and getting a couple of profiles that validate her information on Superpages and Insiderpages, for example.

3) My friend @ matthewjbrown twittered me the name of a local BBQ restaurant and when I looked at the comments, I was very impressed at how the owner actively engaged each negative reviewer. How can you convince small business to monitor and participate in relevant online conversations?

For small business owners, marketing decisions seem to come down to two main questions: how much time am I going to have to spend on it, and how much money can I make from it? They're incredibly busy running their business, so they need to prioritize what they spend their time and money on. If they're lucky, they may have a part-time marketing "executive" but rarely is there someone in-house responsible for marketing.

Obviously, the best incentive would be to show a measurable ROI in terms of web traffic, foot traffic, or revenue, based on other business owners' participation. The difficulty in making that connection in this case is that participation might not *make* you any money, but it might be something you need to do to keep from *losing* money.

So I'd show them a few concrete examples like the one you cited, and these great articles about the power of user reviews: two by search industry pros Matt McGee and Greg Sterling, and one terrific run-down in the San Francisco Chronicle.

4) What criteria should a small / local business use in deciding where best to place their online advertising budget?

Each business's needs are different, so this is a little bit of a tough question.

I'd think first and foremost about how much time you want to spend doing things yourself vs. how much you're willing to pay someone else to do them for you. Especially in Local Search, because the level of search engine competition is generally a little lower, there are a lot of things you can do yourself, if you know the right places to look and sites to target.

So if you're a DIY-er, I'd say your best bet is to schedule a site review and personalized consultation for a couple hundred dollars with a respected Local Search expert like Mike Blumenthal or Miriam Ellis and get his/her opinion about what your business needs. He or she will tell you the low-hanging fruit that you can grab yourself, and offer services where he/she thinks you'll get the most value from his/her expertise.

If you're a delegator, and/or have a little bit larger budget, I'd still schedule that consultation. But then you can also consider some additional options like signing up for a listing with Localeze, getting a premium listing on some high-traffic sites like Yelp or Citysearch, etc. You might also consider paying an employee or a contractor to blog on behalf of your business, if you don't have the time or the inclination to do that yourself. (See my answer to question #7 for more.)

5) Should a small business with a limited budget even bother with having a website? Could resources be better used elsewhere if a "suck" website is all they can afford?

Greg Sterling hosted an interesting discussion about this very topic on his blog just last month. I come down on the side of each business having a website of its own. That could be just as simple as having a landing page with that business's offline contact information and an email address.

Every business should have its own destination online. Even if they don't intend to build it out in the short-term, it's important not to be dependent on other "free" profile websites...who knows when they won't be free any more, when they'll require you to display advertising, etc.

These days, it's so easy to register a domain name and get set up with a reasonably snazzy-looking Wordpress blog with places like Dreamhost, using a templated Theme, that there's no financial excuse not to make that initial step.

6) This John Andrews post about mobile ads made me curious to get your opinion on how mobile search and local search might converge.

I think John's on the right track there. People on mobile devices aren't typically looking for a "rich" user experience. They're looking for information FAST , that they can use to contact a business right from their phone, or at the very least remember to check out in more detail once they're at a laptop or a desktop. The screen is smaller, so there should be more text and fewer graphics.

That's why I think we've seen Google and Yahoo integrate their 10-packs and 3-packs the way they have. Business information like address and phone is available right there , at the very top of the search results, without even clicking through to the website. And there are a lot of businesses listed Locally that don't even HAVE websites.

Some of the stuff that companies in Japan are doing with in-store coupon codes being served right to your phone via a text message is pretty fascinating, too. I think we'll start to see more of that kind of tracking/promotion in the States as a way to drive offline business via mobile. Offline and mobile will continue to reinforce each other, especially for retail stores dependent on a lot of foot traffic.

7) How can small business effectively engage with social media? What social media should they engage with?

HyperLocal blogging is definitely #1. Find out who the top bloggers in your area are (to get started, just do a search for "Portland, Oregon blog" or similar), read their stuff, and start to make comments on it (perhaps mentioning your phone number or address if it's appropriate--see #9). Write about events and other non-competitive businesses in your area and provide some credibility for yourself by demonstrating your expertise and how you stay on top of current trends in your industry.

As you know, I'm also a HUGE fan of Twitter, and I think it's probably the easiest kind of Social Media to understand, because the conversations are so direct.

Research your community and your industry with Summize. See what people in your city are talking about & follow them. See what people in your industry from around the world are talking about. Create content on your own blog or promotions on your own website that you think would interest them, and promote it on Twitter. Those kinds of connections lead to visibility for your own blog and can really help you hone your business messaging and positioning.

On Twitter, there's no such thing as a "power account," which is critical to success on Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. All the interaction is real, and if you are following the right people for your company or your business, and putting out content they like, your visibility, notoriety (and incoming links) can skyrocket.

8) Small businesses are the easiest prey for online search marketing "predators". How can they best protect themselves?

Say no to anyone who emails you or calls you soliciting their services. Seriously. Take down their information and do some investigating. Very few reputable SEO / SEM shops feel the need to troll for business because they've already got a steady growth in their customer base through word-of-mouth or search engine traffic of their own.

If someone refers you to a provider, search for their business name and look at the first three pages of results to see if anyone is making negative comments about them. Look at their own websites, look at some representative clients. If there's any question about their ethics, move on to another firm.

Beyond that, the best way to combat predators is to become educated about search engine marketing yourself. Teach yourself the basics of SEO and SEM so that you can spot a shyster who's trying to pull a fast one. SEOmoz's Beginner's Guide and Aaron Wall's SEObook are great, inexpensive places to start.

So is attending an SEMpdx event--or similar events for the group in your area. You'll generally get high-quality referrals, and meet high-quality practitioners, at events like these.

9) What action items can a small business perform if they read your " Citation Is The New Link" blog post and decided that they needed to better themselves in that area?

The #1 priority for all businesses that have Local customers should be claiming their listing at Google and Yahoo.

Beyond that, take a look at who is ranking well in the Local algorithm and specifically look at the 'Web Pages' tab within their own listings. You'll start to get a sense of the kinds of sites Google is considering as relevant to businesses like yours. Yahoo pulls from a similar set.

Sign up explicitly with your address and phone number for sites that are showing up frequently underneath those tabs for multiple businesses.

Localeze and UniversalBusinessListing.org are great places to syndicate your business information as well.

And just like real estate, "Location, location, location." Google in particular seems really big on citations from blogs whose geography it can pin down definitively. So you can get a lot more high-quality citations from HyperLocal blogs in your area, as I've already mentioned.

10) Please talk about online reputation management in a small business context.

Online reputation management goes hand-in-hand with Local optimization. The overarching strategy of ORM, as I understand it anyway, is to push negative search results further down the search result page by inflating the value of positive or neutral results. How does one do that? By creating profiles across a number of social media sites and industry platforms, getting mentioned in local press and online media.

Guess what--all of these positive or neutral search results that are pushing down the negative mentions are likely going to count as citations in the Local algorithm. So you get bang for your buck both organically AND Locally.

But unlike larger companies, smaller businesses also need to bear in mind reviews across a mushrooming number of portals that get a lot of traffic in their own right. Yelp, Google, Yahoo, Citysearch, MerchantCircle, InsiderPages, TripAdvisor, just to name a few. I don't see an analogous situation for larger businesses, except maybe in the tech and auto spaces where there are a ton of popular, high-trafficked review sites specifically focused on products in these verticals.

It doesn't help that companies like Yelp are putting up such high barriers to engagement by business owners. It's a tough situation -- small businesses have to work twice as hard as larger businesses to manage their online reputation, with fewer resources.

Free White Paper: How to Optimize for Google
A free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds.

by Mike Moran

Frank Reed had an interesting post on his Frank Thinking blog, lamenting how small businesses seem to avoid search marketing. They spend their money on Yellow Pages ads and other older forms of marketing that might not bring the best return on their investment. So, with the U.S. economy focusing every small business on making more from less, why is it that Internet marketing, and search marketing in particular, is so scary? What can we do to help small businesses take advantage of the Internet?

I am not a researcher (and I don't even play one on TV), but from talking to hundreds of small business owners over the years, I have some theories:

• The Internet is still too hard. Most small business owners are not comfortable with technology, because it still requires too much expertise to operate, sucking up time and money they don't have. Time will solve this, because younger owners have more technology experience and because technology does get easier each year (I swear). We should expect that business owners that don't use computers will be suspicious of Internet marketing. But most small business owners have at least made their peace with computers, so what else is holding them back?


• Internet marketing is scary. No matter what you try, there's too much to know to avoid looking like a fool or even breaking the law. Yellow Pages ads, trade show brochures, weekly circulars, and other tried and true small business marketing programs are at least understood. Sure, you could screw something up, but it's hard. But with search marketing, you can blow money on paid search and get no sales. You can send out e-mails the wrong way and run afoul of the CAN-SPAM act. You can breach some Internet etiquette and be a laughing stock. No, for some, it's just too dangerous.


• Inertia. I honestly think this is the big one. Small business owners are the busiest people I know. They spend so much time just executing what they already know how to do that they are ill-equipped to spend any time thinking about something new.

So what can we do?

For one thing, we need to realize that small business owners couldn't care less about being experts in Internet marketing. They don't care what the trends are. They don't care what's hot. Mostly, they care about how they can learn as little as possible and be effective. And honestly, that's what all of us should be concerned about. If we can't explain the value of Internet marketing in terms small business owners can understand, they should ignore us.

But we also need to make Internet marketing easier—especially search marketing, which is so basic to any business. Why is it that the easy-to-use facilities that create Web sites don't help with organic search marketing? Or help business owners analyze the metrics that matter?

They don't. You still need to find your own Web page builder, do your own optimization, learn what JavaScript means so you can get metrics, and a dozen other tasks that we experts take for granted. But each one can baffle a perfectly intelligent small business owner.

It's time that we added the automatic transmission for Internet marketing. Do any of my readers know any examples of truly easy-to-use tools that help businesses sell, not just create a Web site?

Free White Paper: How to Optimize for Google
A free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds.

Updated: Amazon’s second quarter earnings doubled from a year ago as sales jumped 41 percent and executives said that the e-tailer may be benefiting from a slowing economy courtesy of its free shipping deals. On Wednesday, the company reported net income of $158 million, or 37 cents a share, on revenue of $4.06 billion. In the [...]

by David Wallace

I came across a story posted at Search Engine Land pointing out that Google has an "unsatisfactory" record with The Better Business Bureau. How can a company voted "top global brand" in 2008 at the same time have an unsatisfactory record with the BBB? Apparently because out of 331 complaints filed against the search giant over the past three years, 2 were listed as unresolved. that's right - just 2! Despite this, Google continues to lead the way in search and nothing on the horizon seems to be able to change that.
 
This got me thinking as to whether the BBB is still a useful resource in today's online world. Their mission is to be the leader in advancing "marketplace trust" which they accomplish by creating communities of trustworthy businesses, setting standards for marketplace trust, encouraging and supporting best practices, celebrating marketplace role models, and denouncing substandard marketplace behavior. Businesses have always been proud to display their BBB membership, which indicates they are "more trustworthy" than non BBB member companies.
 
Two things have me concerned however as to whether the BBB has outlived their usefulness, especially in the case of "online" businesses.
 
1. BBB Discriminates Against Online Business
 
When a company becomes a BBB member, they are given a certificate that announces their membership. Many will proudly display this in their offices or storefronts so that customers can see they are a member. They may also use the BBB logo it in print advertising to identify their membership. However, should a company decide to announce their membership online via a web site for example, they can only do so through the BBB's Online Reliability Program. Did I mention that this requires an extra fee?
 
I have argued in the past that the BBB's policy to charge extra when displaying the BBB logo online is a discriminatory practice against online business, especially those who have no other way to announce their membership (i.e. they don't have a physical location or storefront). Online businesses not only have to pay the annual BBB member dues which are based on the number of employees they have, they also have to pay a separate fee to announce that membership on their sites.
 
The Better Business Bureau needs to recognize that most businesses today have an online presence and that many of their existing or potential customers will visit them there long before entering a physical location. As a BBB member, a company should have the right to announce that membership on their web sites, social media profiles, online press releases and the like, without having to pay extra fees. Until the BBB changes their policy on this, it is nothing short of discriminatory.
 
2. Do People Even Use The BBB Any Longer?
 
Since joining the Better Business Bureau in 1998, I can count the number of clients that have been referred as a result of them on both hands. On the other hand, the number of clients who have found us online via organic search results is phenomenal.
 
This leads me to wonder how much credibility consumers actually place in BBB valuations. It would seem to me that businesses should have much more concern over what people are saying about them online. I'm talking about online reputation. For example, conduct a search for any brand name - even your own. What do the first page of search results say? Are they positive, negative or even indifferent? This is the space where many consumers are now looking when qualifying whether they want to do business with a company or not.
 
Every time the BBB semi-annual billing statement has arrived in the mail, I have wrestled as to whether to continue my company's membership or not. So far, the BBB has won although I have refused to pay the extra fees for the Online Reliability Program for the last few years even though the BBB logo is present on our sites.
 
I am much more concerned over what the search results say about our company and if you are a business owner you should as well. If something negative begins to show up on the first page, especially above the fold, it can cause irreparable damage to your business. Many companies have discovered this the hard way which then forced them into the very often difficult task of having to repair their tarnished reputations.
 
A Better Solution?
 
One of the beneficial things about BBB membership, at least for consumers, is that you as a company agree to work out disputes with clients. This however is a defense mechanism. In other words, you do not react until the consumer is upset about something. A proactive approach is a much better solution in my opinion. How does one go about accomplishing this? There are several ways to do this with the main idea being "open yourself to communication."
 
This can be done with a company blog that is open to comments. Putting out quality content that is somehow related to your industry or even the specific products and services you offer is a good start. Allowing consumers to interact with you via the comment system is the icing on the cake. It will allow them to engage you of which they might praise you, probe you for more information or even criticize you. It also allows you to react to them, oftentimes long before negativity hits the search results or the BBB.
 
Getting involved with social media is also a great way to be proactive. Setting up profiles on all the major social media sites using your brand name(s) is a great way to control what the search results are saying about you. But don't stop there. Get involved with social media, especially when people are talking about you.
 
It's all about getting involved in the conversation. Consumers want an open dialog with the companies they choose to do business with. So give them what they want.
 
This is what Google does so well. They give consumers what they want - relevant search as well as a wide variety of other products. They keep the door open for communication as well. That is why an unsatisfactory record with the BBB has not hurt them in the least. They continue to grow, acquire and dominate.
 
Our BBB membership comes due in December and to be honest with you, I think I might let it go this time around. I just don't see the value any longer when there are so many other productive things you can do to establish trust with consumers.

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by David Wallace

I came across a story posted at Search Engine Land pointing out that Google has an "unsatisfactory" record with The Better Business Bureau. How can a company voted "top global brand" in 2008 at the same time have an unsatisfactory record with the BBB? Apparently because out of 331 complaints filed against the search giant over the past three years, 2 were listed as unresolved. that's right - just 2! Despite this, Google continues to lead the way in search and nothing on the horizon seems to be able to change that.
 
This got me thinking as to whether the BBB is still a useful resource in today's online world. Their mission is to be the leader in advancing "marketplace trust" which they accomplish by creating communities of trustworthy businesses, setting standards for marketplace trust, encouraging and supporting best practices, celebrating marketplace role models, and denouncing substandard marketplace behavior. Businesses have always been proud to display their BBB membership, which indicates they are "more trustworthy" than non BBB member companies.
 
Two things have me concerned however as to whether the BBB has outlived their usefulness, especially in the case of "online" businesses.
 
1. BBB Discriminates Against Online Business
 
When a company becomes a BBB member, they are given a certificate that announces their membership. Many will proudly display this in their offices or storefronts so that customers can see they are a member. They may also use the BBB logo it in print advertising to identify their membership. However, should a company decide to announce their membership online via a web site for example, they can only do so through the BBB's Online Reliability Program. Did I mention that this requires an extra fee?
 
I have argued in the past that the BBB's policy to charge extra when displaying the BBB logo online is a discriminatory practice against online business, especially those who have no other way to announce their membership (i.e. they don't have a physical location or storefront). Online businesses not only have to pay the annual BBB member dues which are based on the number of employees they have, they also have to pay a separate fee to announce that membership on their sites.
 
The Better Business Bureau needs to recognize that most businesses today have an online presence and that many of their existing or potential customers will visit them there long before entering a physical location. As a BBB member, a company should have the right to announce that membership on their web sites, social media profiles, online press releases and the like, without having to pay extra fees. Until the BBB changes their policy on this, it is nothing short of discriminatory.
 
2. Do People Even Use The BBB Any Longer?
 
Since joining the Better Business Bureau in 1998, I can count the number of clients that have been referred as a result of them on both hands. On the other hand, the number of clients who have found us online via organic search results is phenomenal.
 
This leads me to wonder how much credibility consumers actually place in BBB valuations. It would seem to me that businesses should have much more concern over what people are saying about them online. I'm talking about online reputation. For example, conduct a search for any brand name - even your own. What do the first page of search results say? Are they positive, negative or even indifferent? This is the space where many consumers are now looking when qualifying whether they want to do business with a company or not.
 
Every time the BBB semi-annual billing statement has arrived in the mail, I have wrestled as to whether to continue my company's membership or not. So far, the BBB has won although I have refused to pay the extra fees for the Online Reliability Program for the last few years even though the BBB logo is present on our sites.
 
I am much more concerned over what the search results say about our company and if you are a business owner you should as well. If something negative begins to show up on the first page, especially above the fold, it can cause irreparable damage to your business. Many companies have discovered this the hard way which then forced them into the very often difficult task of having to repair their tarnished reputations.
 
A Better Solution?
 
One of the beneficial things about BBB membership, at least for consumers, is that you as a company agree to work out disputes with clients. This however is a defense mechanism. In other words, you do not react until the consumer is upset about something. A proactive approach is a much better solution in my opinion. How does one go about accomplishing this? There are several ways to do this with the main idea being "open yourself to communication."
 
This can be done with a company blog that is open to comments. Putting out quality content that is somehow related to your industry or even the specific products and services you offer is a good start. Allowing consumers to interact with you via the comment system is the icing on the cake. It will allow them to engage you of which they might praise you, probe you for more information or even criticize you. It also allows you to react to them, oftentimes long before negativity hits the search results or the BBB.
 
Getting involved with social media is also a great way to be proactive. Setting up profiles on all the major social media sites using your brand name(s) is a great way to control what the search results are saying about you. But don't stop there. Get involved with social media, especially when people are talking about you.
 
It's all about getting involved in the conversation. Consumers want an open dialog with the companies they choose to do business with. So give them what they want.
 
This is what Google does so well. They give consumers what they want - relevant search as well as a wide variety of other products. They keep the door open for communication as well. That is why an unsatisfactory record with the BBB has not hurt them in the least. They continue to grow, acquire and dominate.
 
Our BBB membership comes due in December and to be honest with you, I think I might let it go this time around. I just don't see the value any longer when there are so many other productive things you can do to establish trust with consumers.

Free White Paper: How to Optimize for Google
A free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds.

Eye care company Bausch & Lomb has given its CIO the customer service reins. On Wednesday, the company named Alan Farnsworth, senior vice president of customer service and information technology and chief information officer. Cutting through the rather bloated title, it appears that Bausch & Lomb has linked IT and customer service and given one guy [...]

by Mack Collier

One thing I love about blogging is that it gives a small business the ability to quickly and easily build awareness for itself online.  This is exactly what Amrita Chandra is doing to get the word out about her Toronto-based art gallery, Tinku Gallery.

Perhaps the most important aspect of a blog, is making sure your content is positioned from the reader's point of view.  Many small (and large) businesses completely miss this, and want to use their blog as an extension of their website.  They want to use the blog to directly promote their products and services, which is the exact wrong approach to use.

But think about the people that would attend an art gallery.  Why are they there?  More than likely, they are there because they are drawn to the beauty of the artwork on display, and probably drawn a great deal of inspiration from the works the gallery contains.

Which is why I think the blogging approach of the Tinku Gallery's blog, Tinku Tales, is perfect.  Amrita makes a point to delve into the works that her gallery displays, discussing the artist's inspiration for the artwork, and the messages they are trying to convey.  As a bonus, she even talks to some of the artists, so they can share their thought processes, and how they create their works. 


I also love how Amrita includes links to the artists that are being featured at her gallery, and complete contact information for the gallery, as well as her picture AND bio!  But most of all, I love how she promotes the artwork and the inspiration behind its creation.  She is looking at the blog through the eyes of the reader. 

If your business is blogging and you aren't getting the results you were hoping for, step back and look at your content through the eyes of your reader.  What value are you creating for them?  Are you attempting to sell to them, or are you trying to create content that they can find value in?  If you aren't sure how you should be doing, check out Tinku Tales as a good example of the type of blogging experience you should be striving to create!

And if you need specialized blogging help, don't forget that branding expert Christina "CK" Kerley and myself will be conducting a special blogging site clinic during the next Small Business Marketing Unleashed!  In this clinic, we'll carefully analyze blogs that are submitted by attendees, making sure they are positioned properly so that they can give your readers the valuable content they are looking for, while also helping your business grow.  You can get more information on the blogging clinic here, and find out the complete schedule for the next SBMU here.

Free White Paper: How to Optimize for Google
A free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds.