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.
This is a preview of
Triumph of the WhoDat Nation, The Saints & New Orleans
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Read the full post (306 words, 5 images, estimated 1:13 mins reading time)
Tags: community business
Posted in new orleans | 4 Comments »
In the middle of August we started testing Facebook Advertising for one of our plastic surgeon clients. The surgeon wanted to reach potential tummy tuck and breast augmentation patients. We selected a number of stock images and loaded the ads. However, Facebook rejected all of our ads (The Downsides) because they did not follow the Facebook advertising guidelines.

Facebook Advertising Early Lessons
This was a shock to me, the surgeon and the 5 other people who saw the Facebook advertising mockups, because we thought we used:
- relevant and appropriate images and language
- correct grammar
- spelling and punctuation
This is a preview of
Cost-Per-Click Facebook Advertising Delivers Low Cost Per Lead
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Read the full post (365 words, 3 images, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)
Tags: facebook, low cost per lead, social media
Posted in facebook, pay-per-click | 1 Comment »
Recently, I received the phone call that no one in SEO ever wants to receive. In a nutshell, our clients’ site had completely fallen off the rankings. I, of course, began scrambling for what could have possibly happened within a week- the final result…..duplicate content! (Disclaimer: We did not place duplicate content up. It was a franchise site.)

Acceptable Reasons for Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is not looked upon highly by Google, and can either hurt your rankings or make them disappear completely. According to Google Webmaster Tools, there are a few places duplicate content is acceptable.
Posted in uncategorized | 1 Comment »
One of the first road blocks we often have to get around is the belief that the Google Local 7-Pack map listing is the “whole enchilada.”

Yeah, the Google 7-Pack is definitely a positive listing for a local business, gets your listing featured at the top of the page with your primary competition. It’s good stuff, sure. This is not an exact quote, but it comes from Steve Espinosa: “With a #1 map ranking and #1 organic ranking, organic get’s 1.8 times the traffic.” Of a potential 100% combined traffic, 30% would come from the map listing.
This is a preview of
Is it really important to get on the Google map? and … How does a SMB get on the Google Map?
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Read the full post (389 words, 3 images, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)
Posted in uncategorized | No Comments »
Have you ever asked your mechanic to reupholster your seats? Have you asked your aesthetician to give you a face lift? Probably not and with good reason. It isn’t their job. There may be mechanics out there who know a lot about upholstery and some who can actually do it. I’m sure somewhere out there there is an aesthetician who knows all about plastic surgery but that doesn’t mean they are qualified to perform it. I thought it was funny the first time I saw a clause in a designer’s contract stating that they are not IT and will not teach HTML to the recipient of site design. The longer I’ve been in the industry the more I understand why.
Posted in uncategorized | 7 Comments »
I am super excited! After weeks and weeks of searching, I finally found the red, snakeskin platform pumps I have been looking for! Of course, before I make the purchase (and part with that amount of money for a pair of shoes), the first thing I do is Google them and look at customer reviews to see what other users have to say…”Worst shoes ever bought”…”Heel broke after one wear”…”Leather stretched”…”Strap punctured”. Shockingly, they are all negative!
WOW! This company truly needs some online reputation management. Online reputation management is simply the process of monitoring a brand online, dealing with anything negative and understanding how to be pro-active to prevent negative content. The tactics are mostly used by companies to pro-actively protect their reputation from damaging content found online, unfortunately some companies use online reputation management to reactively “fix” the damage that is already done.
This is a preview of
Practical Ways to Combat Potential Negative Publicity
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Read the full post (460 words, 2 images, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)
Posted in uncategorized | No Comments »
The reason testimonials and reviews are so powerful is because they provide a third-party (and hopefully, unbiased) opinion of what actual users think about products and services. Google knows this and considers reviews and citations an important factor in local search rankings.
Studies have shown that not only do long customer stories (2.5 times longer than reviews)
lead to increased, more relevant search results, but increasing website interactivity with fresh, real-world content like customer questions and answers can increase sales conversions and lower customer service costs. For some business owners online reviews have become far more useful than the traditional print yellow pages and savvy business owners have figured out proactive ways to use online review sites.
Posted in community, influencers, reputation management | 2 Comments »
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).

This is a preview of
Benchmarks for Plastic Surgery Marketing Online December 2009
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Read the full post (435 words, 7 images, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)
Posted in plastic surgery, secret sauce | No Comments »
Your Google listing and its Google Place page is a great central depository for all information about your business. It is the compilation of business owner provided data as well as user-generated reviews. The Place page is an incredibly valuable tool for a small or medium size business owner. The Places page URL is friendly to users, easy to share, and easy to find …
You will want to search for your company + geo modifier.
For example, “Search Influence, New Orleans, LA” will get me here:

This is a preview of
Will the Real Google Places Page, Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up?
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Read the full post (347 words, 5 images, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)
Posted in community, do it yourself, local search, maps | No Comments »
Google’s idea of giving small businesses their own page through their project, Place Pages for Google Maps, has got local search buzzing with the SEO implications of this move for small business websites. Could Place Pages provide competition in the SERPS for the small business website? It’s possible. Will they be bad for business? That’s not so clear.
For one, a business without a high ranking or optimized website would benefit from the obvious boost of having Google display “all the information for that place in one place” on its very own Place Page. On the other hand, the fact that Place Pages also provide user-generated content, in the form of reviews, has just made the task of online reputation management that much harder.
Posted in local search, maps, uncategorized | No Comments »