Website Promotion is not Voodoo

I posted a link to Matt McGee’s 7 Questions Small Businesses Should Be Asking and got this question from one of our customers, Steve Kinchen at Hall Piano Company.

It was a great excuse to do a little impromptu analysis. We may do a brief series of these.

Hall Piano Company Local Search Analysis using Matt McGee's 7 Questions Businesses should be asking.

Steven Kinchen Read the article… How does HPC stack up?

Will Scott

Pretty darn good, I’d say.

By @mattmcgee’s standards you’re pretty well covered

Search Influence is proud to be taking part in the first ever Foursquare Advertiser Survey with 3 other companies focused on local search and social media.

Over the next 2 weeks, leading up to SMX Advanced, we will be polling businesses using Foursquares promotions tools to get the word out about their businesses.

If you are one of the advertisers we’ve contacted, please be assured we are very interested in your feedback and are excited to share the data we compile.

Foursquare is an exciting new media type bringing together local search, couponing and loyalty / retention programs around a game -based location-centric service.

I was looking for more contact info for Luther Lowe and noticed his tweet about a blog post explaining Yelp’s Review Filter. Luther does a good job of explaining the Yelp Review Filter and Yelp has commissioned a video which tries to explain it in a friendly way. The review filter, Yelp’s legal woes and the general state of Yelpdom have been the topics of many conversations lately.

While in Portland last week presenting on Facebook Marketing at SEMpdx SearchFest I had a couple great dinners with some really smart people. One of those dinners included the aforementioned smart person Luther Lowe who is part of Yelp’s business outreach team.

Many clients ask what the point of an e-mail newsletter is and how it can help them grow their business.  Will people read it?  Will it clog up potential customer inboxes? How much is it?

There are several reasons I recommend e-mail newsletters. Not only do they provide free information, they are also one of the least expensive and most effective tools to draw attention to a site.  Below are some additional advantages to implementing a company e-mail newsletter.

This is the slide deck from my presentation at Local Search Summit “Using Facebook & Twitter to Drive Local Leads” this afternoon.

We had a great crowd and I enjoyed the heck out of putting this slide show together. I was trying to position some real tactics in using Twitter for local business.

I’m hopeful that it was tactical versus theoretical and I look forward to your feedback.

Please, please, please ask questions and let me know what more you’d like to know.Fireproof trailer

UPDATE: At the suggestion of Terri Troncale I want to invite submissions for non-profits as well. Please, please – fans, recommend your favorites! I’m really happy to have the businesses self-submit but I want to get rid of these iTunes cards

Also, my original limitation on location was because of driving distance to http://socialsouth.org. Please submit anyone, anywhere using Social Media to drive sales, membership, contributions, or any trackable outcome.

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Twitter Bird - Tweet, Tweet, Tweet

Let’s get one thing straight right here: I’m not above buying your love. (Just ask David)

In conversation one day, I mentioned to Will that for what we charge some of our clients, I can put a real value on it when I compare it to yellow pages spending.  And what I mean by that is for what a plastic surgeon or a dentist or a wedding photographer might pay for a large display ad in their local yellow pages, they could be spending the same or less in search engine optimization (SEO – Organic Search) / search engine marketing (SEM – Paid Search) and getting so much more return on investment for their marketing budget.

I had the great experience recently to be interviewed in a lengthy email by Natalie, the Office and Marketing Manger, of an Atlanta Office Cleaning company Clean-Guard Inc.

She sent me an email with a list of questions which were based in large measure on a list at SEOConsultants.com. It was a great list, I’m a guy who likes being challenged and with Natalie’s permission I’m reposting the bulk of that email here:

It’s funny this is the first time I’ve been asked to answer so specific a set of questions but I’m happy to have the opportunity.

I want to apologize for any juvenile references to follow — my 40th birthday is ~ 6 weeks away and this may be part of my mid-life crisis.

Or as my friend Michael, a New Orleans commercial insurance agent, says: “go Google yourself”!

Surely you realize Dr. Elders didn’t really say that. But, what she did say is alleged to have gotten her fired. For those who don’t remember, Joycelyn Elders was fired by Bill Clinton in the 90’s because she said things that, while true, could have used a little more finesse. That said, she was talking about AIDS which clearly warrants a direct approach.