Will Scott Speaking at SMX Advanced June 8-9

Next week’s SMX Advanced Conference in Seattle is sure to prove itself a valuable experience for all in attendance. On June 8 and 9, some of the brightest minds in search marketing will gather in Seattle for a conference that has come to be know as a must-attend for those interested in gathering high level actionable information to apply to their strategies.

Top 10 for the Weekend

1. Why Local Businesses Can No Longer Ignore Foursquare

For some reason businesses are hesitant to jump on the social media bandwagon. It’ll never make sense to me because even if you don’t believe in its power, your customers do!  By simply adding a little prize for the mayor or a special for just checking in, you are almost guaranteed loyal repeat customers looking to catch a deal. It’s a game for these people! Make your business the board!

2. The Rise of SMB Reputation Management

Top 10 for the Weekend

Once again we’ve collected some handy links that we thought you’d find enjoyable and useful. Have a look and maybe you’ll get some ideas for what to do on Monday when the clients and customers start calling…

1. GoogleSpeak – “We currently do not support the location” = Banished?

As much as we love Google Maps… it’s got a long way to go until it’s a fully reliable business tool. It works perfectly for many, but some businesses end up with a problem-laden listing or market and just can’t seem to get it straightened out. If you’re a small business struggling to get your business details out there, you are not alone! Stay tuned for future posts on how to manage it!

Top 10 For the Weekend

We’re constantly coming across interesting articles, photos, and links around here. Some are relevant to our line of work, some not so much, some are funny, some are informative. Today we’d like to share a few of the most practical and useful ones with you.

Check out this blatant use of buying Yelp! reviews. While they aren’t directly handing out cash to each customer that gives them 5 stars or writes something positive about their salon on Yelp!, this practice still goes against the ranking site’s terms of use.

Local Business Marketing on Foursquare

While many companies are still figuring out Facebook and Twitter as a means of local business marketing, a whole new social media is beginning to break into the mainstream. While the underlying idea is to keep you connected, just as other social media networks, foursquare takes it to the next level.

It’s also similar to other outlets in such ways that you connect to people you know by adding them as a “friend,” but past that, this new location-based app sets itself apart by integrating the service into everyday activities, being primarily mobile-based, and serving as a “tap and go” app, with which it  doesn’t take much longer to interact than it does to send a text message to a friend letting them know where you’re having your coffee.

The Secret of Small Business Social Media - You Must be Present to Win

One of the questions we hear from pretty much every client is “Should we be on Facebook?” “Do I need to Twitter? Tweet? Twit?” or, if they are already on it, they ask how they can make better use of Twitter or Facebook for business purposes.

For a small business to be successful using social media, a small business must be an active participant in and on that social media platform, whatever it may be. Since Facebook is the most widely used social media outlet with more than 400 million members, and has the greatest variety of uses, we’ll illustrate how you can use it to your advantage. It may seem we talk about Facebook a lot on here, but that’s because people are interested in it, and want to know how to approach it.