October 2007 Archives

Last week Meme wrote about the growing importance of social networking, and here's a post from SEO 2.0 called the Top 7 Niche Social News Communities that demonstrates how vibrant social networks have become.

The power of social networks is a development search engine marketers must pay attention to. Valleywag describes cutting edge pay per click models that are taking shape in the Facebook community.

Speaking of Facebook, Tech Crunch reports on how that community is primed to do battle with the leading professional social network, LinkedIn.

Search Engine Land asks the question, is social media marketing the new SEO? Whether it is or isn't, clearly the definition and objectives of SEO are changing.

A helpful post from 10e20 on the importance of images in linkbait articles, and how to maximize their effect.

Search marketers must know their audience. SEM Geek explains who the Echo Boomers are and how to market to them.

From SEO Theory, 20 Hard Core SEO Tips every search marketer should know!

Happy Halloween from everyone at Whoast!

Times and technology may have changed, but the need for a business person to understand and quantify their market and industry did not. The methods around research have evolved with the growing capabilities of the internet, and so has the level and quantity of sheer data available to us today. Below are some posts and articles that can get you started in your research.

CNet has rounded up some great online services that help you "go straight to expert sources and keep track of your research". They have something for everyone, from the student to the businessperson.

Sometimes, the obvious is not where you'll find the information you need- the Online Education Database has what they call The Best Online Research Apps/Sites You Never Heard of. One such unheralded site -

Intute provides access to Web-based resources for science, technology, arts, humanities, and social sciences. The database contains well over 100,000 records and continues to grow. Subject experts review old records regularly to ensure that information is as current as possible.

Not everything is online, so I am still a big fan of widening your research base to include not only online, but hard copy resources as well. To get you started-- who better than entrepreneur.com to recommend the perfect research tools (both online and hardcopy) for the entrepreneur? In The Best Research Tools for Entrepreneurs they talk about some of their favorites - here is a snapshot.

• The Encyclopedia of Associations lists thousands of trade associations, offering contact information and vital stats. This is crucial to all entrepreneurs seeking information about a particular industry.
• The D&B Million Dollar Database offers access to online information on more than 1.6 million private and public U.S. and Canadian companies, their sales, their number of employees and other important information. This is helpful when checking out potential partners, seeking clients or customers, or "spying" on your competition. Visit the site for subscription information.
• Demographic information (crucial to learning about your target market) can be found in Editor and Publisher Market Guide and The Sourcebook ZIP Code Demographics.
• If you're looking for information on government contracting opportunities, visit FedBizOpps (formerly Commerce Business Daily).

 

In this day and age, everyone is just a couple of mouse clicks (or blocks) away from huge amounts of information, The smart entrepreneur is the one who understands the value of the information and knows where to find it.

 

Now that we have you thinking more about social networking ... Do you think that Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace are "it" for social networking? Think again. Things are never quite that simple in the internet world - if you have an interest, you have a network - check out Social Networking GOD: 350+ Social Networking sites and you'll get the idea.

Here is one that might be of interest to the small home-based business, the ApSense Social Networking For Home Business. Here is what work-at-home business blog says about Apsense:

Please remember that when you join  Apsense you're joining a community of business people. They don't all want to buy from you right now. They're trying to make money.  So use your connections there to share ideas and sometime in the future you might get your top MLM distributor or a great business partner there. But unless you're selling services businesses can use to sell more, they may not be hot CUSTOMERS right away.

In the post - How To Make Social Networking Work For You  Judy Mottl interviews the president of The Living Textbook (a solutions provider that works with school districts, state education departments and educational service agencies to develop educational materials) and this is what he has to say about social networking -

The president of The Living Textbook, , believes it's one of the best tools a business has at its fingertips today... "I see social networking really as an evolution of communication and a desire to share and dialog around subject matters in a deeper person-to-person way. It also enables a forum of people to come together in a way in which they feel more connected to a marketplace," he says.

The social networking weblog recommends a white paper called Social Networking for Business.
 According to their review -

The main things you're going to learn by reading this document are how to build business relationships using social networking, why social medial is becoming more important than the traditional way of doing things, how to make the new social networking service for your business become a success.

It is  always good to check out your industry's social networking landscape before forging ahead, with the right tools and network you will be able to leverage this semi-new dynamic relationship building tool to your advantage.

Search engine marketing, search engine optimization, blogs, interactive Web sites, podcasts, videocasts, online press releases, social networks ... the landscape of marketing has changed dramatically in only a few years. And guess what? It's going to change more, and it's going to change faster. As a business leader, you're probably wondering how to keep up with it all, let alone leverage new technologies to take your business to the next level.

I've been doing a lot of high altitude reading on the new world of marketing lately. Here are a few books to give you perspective, understanding, and challenge your imagination.

The New Rules of Marketing and  PR, by David Meerman Scott discusses how marketing has changed, why it is changing, how business can adapt, and why it must. David starts with the big picture, laying out the general principles. He then turns his attention to the details, providing us with real world examples of how to turn these new principles into profitable action. Easy to read, highly informative, and loaded with common sense. Learn more about the author at his blog, Web Ink Now.

Wikinomics, By Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams will appeal especially to those working in and involved with large organizations, where new methods of collaboration, fueled by rapidly developing interactive Web techniques, are turning old organizational structures on their head. Lots of companies continue to operate and innovate in secrecy. The authors provide many compelling examples of why such an approach could lead to disaster. The authors go way beyond marketing, but the implications for marketing strategy are enormous. Learn more at the Wikinomics blog and the blog of co-author Anthony D. Williams.

Word of Mouth Marketing, by Andy Sernovitz, explores how to use new technologies to create customer interest and involvement. And oh, yeah - sales. Although it's been overlooked in recent years, there's no question that word of mouth marketing works - it always has. The book is full of practical tips that any size business can put into practice quickly and most often, at little or no cost. To learn more, visit Andy's darned funny and darned helpful blog.

Put the three of these together, and you'll be in good shape to take advantage of new marketing opportunities. I get the feeling that a lot more is being written than read within the business community, so here's a chance to get an edge.

What have you read lately to get a grip on marketing?
 

Much has been said about social networks, their quick growth and gradual integration into a dynamic new form of  relationship building and marketing. But what does the future hold for social networking? This is a question that holds weight not only in the US, but globally. According to ZD NetAsia's article Analyst: Social networking faces uncertain future:

Growth in the membership of social-networking sites varies dramatically by region, according to the analyst, which predicts Asia Pacific will account for 35 percent of global social networking users by the end of this year, followed by EMEA (28 percent), North America (25 percent), and the Caribbean and Latin America (12 percent).

What this means for the small business is that global reach of your company's services or message is possible through the use of social networking sites (barring language issues). But much like any other technology, some tapering is expected to happen within the next 5 years. According to pcworld's  "Social Networking to Taper Off in Five Years"

According to market tracker Datamonitor, global active memberships in social networking sites will reach 230 million at the end of 2007. The firm expects revenues from social networking services to reach US$965 million this year, growing to $2.4 billion by 2012...But the firm cautions social networking companies and investors not to get giddy with the growth and popularity of the services. Although players would like to be in on the next Google or Yahoo, exuberance must be tempered with memories of the Internet bubble bursting at the beginning of this decade.

For the meantime, companies are still finding benefits with engaging in online social networking - the Guardian Unlimited's Social networking 'a boost to PR'  says:

 
The popularity of sites such as Facebook and MySpace is driving growth in public relations as companies tap into the power of recommendation, according to WPP advertising boss Sir Martin Sorrell."It is unusual for it to be so strong at this stage in the cycle and the reasoning behind it is to do with social networking and the web," said Sir Martin. "Social networking seems to underline the importance of editorial publicity. Social networking is really recommendation between people about the things that they are interested in and they like... this has stimulated people's attention."

So who is the biggest and best site so far? Seeking Alpha's "Social Networking Sites: Blogger is Biggest, Facebook Growing Fastest" analyzes the latest comScore results:

According to internet research firm comScore, Blogger had the largest number of unique visitors of all social-networking sites in September, but Facebook grew the fastest. Yahoo's Geocities and Yahoo! Groups are struggling, but its Flickr.com service grew almost 100% year-over-year. Blogger is gaining market share from Typepad (Six Apart) in the blog space, and Wordpress.com is now significantly larger than Typepad

Check out Google's Zeitgeist 2007's Social Networking Panel Discussion which includes the CEO of LinkedIn . The panel talks about the art of the social start specifically for the start-up entrepreneur and the social network marketer. 

 

The numbers are hard to ignore. Comscore, an internet information provider, has this to say about social networking giants MySpace and facebook in their article on Measuring Social Networking Sites.

Social networking behemoth MySpace.com attracted more than 114 million global visitors age 15 and older in June 2007, representing a 72-percent increase versus year ago.  Facebook.com experienced even stronger growth during that same time frame, jumping 270 percent to 52.2 million visitors.  Bebo.com (up 172 percent to 18.2 million visitors) and Tagged.com (up 774 percent to 13.2 million visitors) also increased by orders of magnitude.

And then this from Comscore's "More than Half of MySpace Visitors are Now Age 35 or Older, as the Site's Demographic Composition Continues to Shift"
 
Visitors to MySpace.com and Friendster.com generally skew older, with people age 25 and older comprising 68 and 71 percent of their user bases, respectively.  Meanwhile, Xanga.com has a younger user profile, with 20 percent of its users in the 12-17 age range, about twice as high as that age segment's representation within the total Internet audience.  Not surprisingly, Facebook.com, which began as a social networking site for college students, also draws a younger audience.  More than one-third (34 percent) of visitors to Facebook.com are 18-24 years old, approximately three times the representation of that age segment in the general Internet population.

Here is a good example of how social networking sites serve as a business generating tool for a specific industry--in this case- apparel retail, as seen in cnn.com's article "Social Networking Sites Represent an Attractive Venue for Advertising Apparel Products"
 

More than 95 percent of heavy social networkers visited retail sites in August, compared to 80 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience. These heavy social networkers exhibited a particularly high tendency to visit the more leisure-oriented retail categories, including those featuring entertainment (music, tickets, books and movies), fashion (apparel, jewelry/luxury goods/accessories), and retail technology (consumer electronics, computer software and hardware).

What this means to small business owners is that social networking sites are no longer simply the realm of companies targeting students or teens. Growth in all the major social networking sites reflects an increased usage among an expanding and diverse market demographic.

 
Where should you start? Like anything else, after doing your homework. In some cases it might simply mean setting up a page, and start tapping into your immediate network found in that particular site. Unlike a full blown website, a social networking site is a way for people to actually connect and learn more about you while keeping it "intimate"  by restricting you to the people you "know" or people who know people you know ... like a massive six degrees to Kevin Bacon game but with you being Kevin Bacon. On the other hand these sites also open the door for you to create a whole network based on an interest or a hobby- one MySpace page is dedicated to the green ipod nano http://www.myspace.com/greennano. Although this page was not created by Apple, it does still receive its share of "friends".

Here is what you should be asking yourself before you venture forth.

1. Where are your customers/vendors/competitors? You want to be where the largest number of your constituency or target market are.
   
2. Do you have the time to manage and update your page/network?
   
3. If you are using the site as a way to increase business (rather than a personal networking tool) you should make sure that your "image" remains professional - i.e. no killing zombies or poking fun at people on facebook. It is unfortunate but for now there is not a way for you to separate your "persona's" in such a way that people would see a different you if they were a different categorized contact (i.e. business vs. old classmate).
   
   

Additionaly, Cristopher Allen's Review of LinkedIn, tribe.net, and friendster is hard to beat with its level of detail and depth.
http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2003/12/evaluating_soci.html

It's not news. What started as an "underground" fad mostly used by students or teens has (as usual) now gone mainstream - the online social network. Here's how Wikipedia defines "social network." 

A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes.

But in the virtual world, social network services such as MySpace, Facebook, Multiply, and Bebo (to name a few), are not only blazing trails in the mainstream world, but the business world as well. Businesses are realizing the gains of establishing and maintaining an intimate networking relationship with customers, employees, and stakeholders.

Not just the realm of politicians (check out Obama's or Giuliani's) or celebrities anymore either, companies such as Starbucks  and Weight Watchers  have extensive myspace pages, and even Pfizer is joining the bandwagon by creating their own version of facebook for doctors called Sermo. ( read more in the Financial Times article called Pfizer Takes a Leaf out of Facebook) More and more small business startups are beginning to see the opportunities that come with social networking according to the Houston Chronicle's article "Internet Startups going Social"
 

Whether it's leaving comments at the bottom of news stories, posting vacation pictures on a photo-sharing site or creating MySpace pages, the Web has gone social. Gone are the days of Web users passively surfing, reading and consuming.
The astronomic success of social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, whose 23-year-old founder recently turned down a $1 billion bid to sell the company to Yahoo, has prompted others with dollar signs in their eyes to chase the trend -- with a twist. Instead of aiming for massive networking sites aimed at pretty much everyone, the latest wave is trying to reach specific audiences.

There is a down side - going overboard with social networks Max Kalehoff  talks about "Socialnetworkitis." in his post about the perils of being involved in too many social networks.  Love them or hate them, this "fad" is not going away, according to the Wisconsin Technology Networks' The Expanding World of Social Networking: 

College students aren't the only ones that think Facebook is "really hot," with Microsoft reportedly in discussions with the company to take a 5 percent minority for an investment of $300 to $500 million, an interest valuing the total company at close to $10 billion , according to MSNBC. Beyond Microsoft, entrepreneurial software developers have jumped on the Facebook phenomenon - 70,000 developers have already signed up with the company to develop site applications , according to The Wall Street Journal.
Another accelerating trend, according to Business Week, is the growth of in-house social networks. Large multi-national corporations are seeking to capture the "wisdom of crowds" and to encourage employees, alumni, retirees, and other stakeholders to interact with one another. Among the companies that are creating these networks are Ning, Visible Path, Mentor Scout, Web Crossing, and Select Minds. SelectMinds is reported to have created "networks for 60 companies, including Lockheed Martin and JPMorgan Chase."

Bottom line is, social networking is here to stay. It pays to look deeper into the different networks and what might work best for you. The next post in this series will be an analysis on the different social networking sites and how to decide what will work best for you and your business.

 

Deciding where to begin in terms of setting your search-related budget is no easy feat. To this day, multinational companies and industry veterans still struggle with the ever changing search engine "world" and its myriad of costly nuances. A good place to start is to look at the type of business you have and the market you cater to. Are you a B2B or B2C company? That alone will be able to help steer you through the search strategy budget maze. B to B's article "Stark contrast in use of new media between b-to-b, b-to-c companies"  talks about their online new media survey and the differences between responses from b to b versus b to c companies.  Additionaly, their article on "Survey: Search competition doesn't guarantee bigger budgets" also sheds light on how market competition affects or doesn't affect budgeting:

 

For most b-to-b search marketers, larger budgets follow solid results rather than simply reflecting the scale of the competitive challenge," said Ben Hanna, VP- marketing at Business.com, in a news release. "Being effective in b-to-b search marketing today means understanding the competition, making the right keyword choices and choosing the combination of general search engines and specialized business search sites that deliver the best return.

 

Where do you even start?  According to Kevin Lee's post on "Setting a Search Marketing Budget",  in the rush to set a figure around your SEM budget, you might make costlier mistakes. Here is what he says on avoiding this pitfall:

 

Before diving in, it's better to collect and analyze data regarding what kind of search listings, creative, and keywords work for you. This can be done while running more flexible deals on a variety of nonportal venues before committing to a portal deal. Both Google and Overture provide great levels of control with listings that are displayed on major portals.

 

At the end of the day the name of the game is allocation. How much of your marketing pie are you going to slice away for internet or search related programs? Al Diguido gives a good defense for strengthening your email strategy in Marketing Budget Allocation: Follow the Money.

You are the best judge of what would work for your company. Your budget is technically what you can afford that you hope can give you the highest returns possible. Spending on SEO or SEM may feel like a shot in the dark sometimes, but in the long run, if well planned out with the right people internally or externally guiding you, should give you your big gains.

Today marketing is all about conversations. Especially online marketing. Consumers are no longer content to be the passive recipients of a canned message delivered on a corporate Web site, no matter how much it's glitzed up with fancy graphics and animation. Consumers want to be involved. They want to ask questions, make suggestions, and share ideas. And they want a response.

This change in consumer mood explains the explosion of blogs - over 70 million of them at last count. The change in mood explains a phenomenon perhaps more explosive even than blogs - the raging popularity of social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Businesses should pay attention to LinkedIn in particular. It's a collaborative community of professionals exchanging ideas, tactics, strategies, job opportunities, and much more.

If your company's Web site is essentially an online billboard, you're not giving customers what they want. Here are a few ways you can make your site conversational.

Add a blog. Give customers an opportunity to talk to you about any topic on which you choose to write.

Add conversational pages. You don't necessarily need a full blown blog for customers to talk to you. In some cases commenting functionality can be added to a static Web page, creating a "mini blog", or what I call an "in-between blog".

Add an information center. Have a section of your Web site dedicated to announcements, press releases, personnel updates, industry links, and other time sensitive/useful information.

Add an RSS feed. Once you start doing the above, give customers the ability to subscribe to your Web site, so they don't have to come looking for all the new information you publish.

Write content in the first person. Which would you rather hear?  "ABC Company delivers innovative solutions to the construction industry," or "We can solve your problems"?  Make your site personal and engaging (and persuasive) by writing as if you were writing a letter to a single individual.

Add or enhance your contact form. Does your Web site make it easy for customers to get in touch with you? If so, do you encourage customers to use it? Do you make it easy for them to categorize a request or a question? Do you explain how and when you will respond, and who will do the responding?  A robust contact form is no longer a frill, it's a must.

If you've invested in a search marketing program (a wise choice!), it's all the more reason to update and "conversationalize" your Web site. Once customers find you on the search engines, you'll want them to stick around and come back.

The world of search engine marketing is changing fast. Here are articles you can read fairly quickly to keep your finger on the pulse of at least a few major developments.

Search trends. Yesterday comScore released a study of worldwide search, full of noteworthy statistics. As expected, Google dominates the field, but foreign search engines are gaining share. Why? The Web is a worldwide phenomenon. In fact, according to this study, Europeans and Asians conduct more searches than Americans. More evidence that American companies need to think globally, regardless of size.

Universal Search. Everybody's talking about it, but what is it? Lee Odden explains Universal Search for the non-technical reader - what it is, why it's important, and how companies can optimize their online marketing to leverage it. If you've been wondering how video, podcasting, press releases, audio, and images fit into your search marketing strategy, read this post.

Mobile Search. Jon Miller worries mobile search is irrelevant to B2B marketing. He makes several good points, but I'm not sure I agree. As mobile devices become easier to use, more versatile, and more pervasive, they may become as natural a part of doing business as cell phones.

Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click. Companies often ask, which of these should I do? Wrong question!  Brian Kaminski explains not only why you need SEO and PPC, but why you need to integrate them.

Time was where eBay was one of the biggest marketplaces online. Now with emerging changes in how people look for and buy items online, eBay is fighting to maintain their share of the internet pie.

A more personal and simpler buying experience 

This is what Businessweek's article "Ebay's Bid to Win Back Buyers" has to say about the recent changes:

Now eBay is making the biggest effort in its 12-year history to recapture the magic - and bring back the buyers. The company is completely revamping its flagship site, making it easier for shoppers to find and purchase items and discover goods they never knew they had to have. "We are more focused on buyers than we have ever been before," says John Donahoe, president of eBay's Marketplaces, the division that oversees eBay's core shopping business.

Terri Wells gives an in-depth review of some of the changes on eBay in his post for Search Engine News - "Ebay Overhauls Site". Are the changes truly improving the buying experience? Here are some examples of what modifications were made:

One example of this is the new Bid Assistant. If you buy items such as CDs, DVDs, books or other things that are not truly one of a kind, you might find this useful. The Bid Assistant lets the user group several desired items together and choose the highest amount that he or she wants to bid. The Bid Assistant then does the bidding automatically, and stops when it has won one of them for the user. As a quick note, Bid Assistant is only available to people with feedback of 5 or higher, so you need to actually have used eBay and received some positive feedback either as a buyer or a seller (or both).

Another example lets users bid with just one click in the final 15 minutes of an auction. You won't have to constantly refresh the page in your browser to see whether you are still the high bidder. Instead, the page will display a smaller "layer" that will tell you how much time before the auction ends, what the current high bid is, and whether you are still the high bidder. Users will only need to refresh that small layer rather than the whole page. Refreshing that one section should happen much more quickly.

As more bloggers are weighing on the "new and improved" eBay, Lissa McGrath ponders the question "Is bidding from Ebay's auction page now history?" in her post on "Ebay's new Bid History page." 

 
I have always been a faithful user of the Auction page for bidding, but I decided I would give using the Bid History page a shot. I used the refresh button (that appears when there are only 15 minutes remaining on the auction, same as on the Auction page) to keep an eye on the time remaining, and placed and confirmed my bid from the Bid History page. It was actually a lot of fun. I didn't feel distracted by other things going on (mainly because this page is very minimalistic and has no ads or fluff to it).

With 241 million registered users worldwide and 153 million PayPal accounts, eBay is far from rolling over and dieing anytime soon. But in this fast paced technological age, every online company is just a step or two away from being ousted by the next newest thing- as seen in Google's meteoric rise. Ebay's changes attest to their realizing that at the end of the day, customers are finicky, and the best way to retain both online shoppers and online sellers is constant improvement and change.

You have your snazzy site, you've search optimized your content, and finally see some traffic coming in. That is a good start - but where you really want to get to is a point where you can measure and see an improvement in the number of people who click into your site and are converted into customers. Much like a brick and mortar store, you want to make sure the "window shoppers" actually shop or may shop in the near future, and that is where post-click marketing comes in.

Do you have surfers or sales?

In Minding the Gap Between Click and Conversion  this ecommerce times post gives a good idea of how things look on average: 

 
As an industry average, only about 3 percent of the people who click into your funnel make it all the way down to conversion. Your mileage may vary, but odds are that your funnel is pretty darn narrow at the bottom, and you face constant pressure to increase the number of conversions flowing out of it.

Anna Talerico's post on The Seven Principles of Post-Click Marketing
examines what makes a successful post-click marketing effort. But what else can post-click marketing do for you? One thing that you can fold into your campaign is online house lists to help you strategically target prospects. Melissa Data's  Building House Lists Online with Post-Click Marketing  has this to say on building online house lists:

Building an internal list of prospects can be one of the most valuable things a marketing department can do. It can also be one of the most expensive. And frustrating...In order for a sizable house list to be a tenable goal, it must be cost effective and of high quality. Traditionally those two characteristics have been at odds. You could generate a big (cheap) list or a higher quality, small (expensive) list. But 'traditionally' doesn't apply in 2007. When you focus on what happens after your prospect clicks on your online ad or email, you can reduce your cost per acquisition and raise your overall lead quality

Post-Click Marketing: Designing for Conversion has practical recommendations as well as an insightful comment from Scott Brinker about the importance of simplicity in your site design -

We've run a lot of experiments comparing heavy vs. light pages in post-click marketing landing paths, and 9 times out of 10, the "lighter" strucuture (less copy, simple/relevant images, only asking for the necessities to deliver what the customer is looking for) wins, hands down.

 

So it may just be that the internet is now this boundery-less world where small businesses have access to markets that they never had before. True, but on the flip side of the coin is the fact that the internet customer still, for the most part, wants to do business with someone in their area (see the last post on local search). Beyond that fact is another one. Your site may also need to target areas not in your neighborhood, yet still be relevant to your business - Ian Felton, in his post-- Does Your Website know Geography? 
gives a good example of this.

Geography doesn't only play a part in determining navigation and categorization of a website. It also plays a vital part in determining the location of an audience for a specific product type. If a website's product relates to investments, many more potential users will be in New York City as opposed to Kansas City. Likewise, if a website's product relates to fashion, many more potential users will be in Paris or Los Angeles than Oklahoma. Each production team must determine the demographics of their customer base and then design a plan to suit that geographic area.

Here is something else to think about, although to some this may come at a cost-- leveraging online yellow pages. According to the post Search Engine Optimization through Yellow Pages,
"Yellow pages sites have higher PageRank and better keyword positions than smaller sites will typically be able to achieve for "business type" searches." In short, your customers may be "letting their fingers do the walking" in more ways than in print.

Scratching more than the surface in terms of local search would be looking into Google's local search "machine" found within their Google Maps. Jim hedger's post Google Maps is Local Search has this to say:

A completed registration will place your business on a Google Map and help insure it comes up correctly under relevant keyword phrases in general web searches. There are too many reasons to outline why a site needs to be listed in Google Maps aside from bettering their chances of coming up in a general web search.

There is more than meets the eye with local search - the right way to see it is through the eyes of your current or potential customers. How do they conduct their "local" search? What would be the best way to reach them? Find the answer to that, and you solve the mystery of what to do and where to market your website.

Today on Word Sell, I observed that RSS is "the most underutilized technology tools in business today."  RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, has been around since 1999, but it remains a mystery to most folks outside of bloggers, geeks, and workers in the technology sector.

But RSS is a superb tool for search marketing, no matter what your business. RSS enables you to subscribe to blogs or regular Web pages, so that newly published material comes directly to you, just like a newspaper delivered to your home. Instead of combing the Web to find new material on the Web sites you like to follow, new material comes to you - immediately and, unlike newspaper subscriptions - at no cost.

An RSS feed (like the one you see on this blog's sidebar, marked by the orange RSS emblem) is cost free and easy to set up. Your company can use RSS to deliver important information to suppliers and customers -

• New product announcements.
• Personnel changes.
• Upcoming events.
• Industry news.
• Company news.
• Employee profiles.
• Sales promotions.
• User tips.
• Case studies.
• Anything else you can think of!

If you're smart enough to be publishing fresh content on your site, take the next step and offer an RSS feed. Your valuable information is not getting read, because you're relying on people coming to your site, which doesn't always happen.

It may take a little work to show customers how to use RSS, but they don't call it Real Simple Syndication for nothing. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to subscribe to feeds and read them. 

RSS gets your marketing message out, directly to the people you want to communicate with. But equally important, RSS puts customers in control. Customers decide what feeds they want to subscribe to. Customers decide when to read them. Customers decide when to stop subscribing.

Customers like that. If you offer an RSS feed, customers will like you, too.  Give us a call - we can help you set up your feed. There's really no reason not to RSS.