Website Promotion is not Voodoo

You need to watch out! I was just reading the Google Lat Long Blog and they’re telling people to edit YOUR Google business listing.

This is really, really, bad. Look at this picture. I didn’t want to steal the image from the Google blog post so I made my own which shows a business listing on Google in grave danger.

Your Google business listing is in danger!

We’ve talked in the past about the importance of claiming your Google. It’s critical. Do it now!

No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.

Quoted from Malcolm Gladwells “Outliers: The Story of Success” in the Freakonomics Blog

Related:

When the sun comes up, you better start running

Google Buzz with its “Connected Sites”option is deeper, and perhaps more insidious, than we thought. It appears, that in addition to insinuating itself into Gmail, Gchat and Google’s mobile services, through Google My Social Circle Google Buzz is picking up information from sites listed in your Google Profile and including “Social Content” in the actual search results, blended as they might News or Video content.

My Mumbai Social Circle

I was reading a blog post from Small Business SEM’s Matt McGee this morning in which he referenced a search result for “small business reputation management“. So I clicked the link and got the following results set:

Below are the slides from my presentations to the National Association of Senior Move Managers last weekend.

This is my second year talking to the Senior Movers and they’re a great, very appreciative crowd. This year, I spent about 3 hours after the presentation doing review / recommendation sessions with attendees and it was FANTASTIC!

Because these files are so big I decided to post them here. They’re referenced from Google Docs, which I like better than SlideShare given SlideShare shows other, competitive stuff next to your slides.

NASMM-Website Promotion Basics

Social Media – What’s in it for YOU?

As anyone who knows me, or one of our team, or even who has read this blog a few times knows, we do a fair amount of work in online Plastic Surgery Marketing.

Paul Parker M.D. - New Jersey Plastic Surgeon

As with any business we have some customers who just go along – who are happy to get our monthly reports, see their return on investment analysis and make the occasional comment or request. While we try, we can’t get all of our plastic surgeon clients on the phone monthly or even quarterly and ultimately, when it’s their business and their paycheck they are the ones who have a vested interest in their marketing effectiveness.

Who dat?

Who dat?

Who dat say dey gonna beat dem saints?

#whodat - from Maitri

The above is my best approximation of the phonetic for the entire “Who Dat” chant. Who Dat, used to be a very personal, private New Orleans thing. I was in New York a few weeks ago visiting my mother and she asked “What’s this ‘Who Dat?’ thing all about”?.

And yes, I use my mother as my barometer for ubiquity. For instance, when my mother’s on Facebook everyone is on Facebook.

Plastic Surgery Internet References Benchmark for December Shows Overall Decline of Less Than 17% from Spring – The Busiest Season of The Year

We work with a number of plastic surgeons and have the opportunity to really get a sense for their zeitgeist. Right now many of them are feeling a pinch – our review had, to this point, been anecdotal rather than analytical. Suffice it to say we knew there was a problem but didn’t know if it was a lack of traffic, or a lack of conversion (window shopping but no buying).

I’ll be making a very quick trip to Chicago on Monday to do a couple presentations at the Local Search Summit.

I’ll be solo presenting with Steve Espinosa moderating on uses of Social Media for local search.

And, I’ll be jointly presenting with Steve on Mobile applications and their importance for local search.

Sadly I won’t have any time to spend with Mat Siltala who will be there Monday, but is leaving Tuesday AM. Perhaps a little dessert!

President and founder of the New Orleans SEO company Search Influence, Will Scott often participates in conferences and seminars. Oct 5-7, he will be presenting at the Search Marketing Expo East 2009 on how important local search ranking factors help drive traffic to small business Web sites.

In a recent press release announcing the session, Will Scott talks about the Local Search ranking factors – 49 of them thought to make or break local business listings.

Our colleauge Mat Siltala of Dream Systems Media (Mat was Social before Social was cool) has a nice video tutorial with some great screen shots on how to set up your LinkedIn Company Profile

.

Among the benefits are:

• One more positive reference for your brand (reputation management)
• Ability to show your depth with automatic pickup of employees
• Rich text opportunities

• Once Upon a Time in Mexico movies

Mat put together a nice video and has many more screen shots of building the LinkedIn business page on the DSM internet marketing blog. Definitely worth a quick review.