Tag Archives: internet

Search & Social-Largest Sponsor of Foursquare Day Tampa!

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Tampa, The epicenter of foursquare day (#4sqday), will be erupting with foursquare fun-ness! Search & Social has decided to sponsor this event today (April 16th) by donating a free ticket to be raffled off for our Spring Summit ! We donated the largest prize there. You can obtain raffle tickets by either checking in at the event or doing the puzzle piece search throughout town. The Foursquare day idea got kick started by optometrist and social media lover  Nate Bonilla-Warford . Once his idea was thrown out into the internet world, it was tossed around and mulled over by many people, until he met with a series of key players who helped bring his idea to a reality. Brought to you in part as well by Girls in Tech and Creative Loafing , this fun filled social media holiday will be taking place all around town. If you want to find and support a local business that’s participating with awesome 4sqday deals, you can find them on the 4sqday Tampa page . One thing that we’re trying to do, in order to support the city of Tampa and let everyone know we’re a big town with a little name, is to attempt to get the “Super Swarm” badge by having 250+ people check in to our swarm event. The swarm event is from 6-9PM tonight (Friday, April 16th) is located at the Hyatt @ 211 North Tampa Street. Tampa, FL 33602. There are numerous fun filled challenges going on, so checkout the 4sqday Puzzle Hunt going on, to win a raffle ticket, and make sure you check-in to the Swarm Event! Don’t worry if you can’t play with puzzle piece game… by checking in to the swarm event tonight you’ll be eligible for a raffle ticket too! Thao and I (from search & social) will be doing check-ins, so if you decide to come by, say hi! You can also follow the Creative Loafing Street Team on twitter, @cl_streetteam , because if you can find them, they’ll be giving away fun stuff! As always, you can follow me @esvienne and Thao Tran @Thaott .   Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Search & Social-Largest Sponsor of Foursquare Day

Local Business Listing Marketing vs. Data Services

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As local business marketing as become a hot topic in the Internet marketing industry, business owners are finding themselves confused about the various types of services that can help them tap into this local marketing tool.  Of course additional confusions arise from the variations of service fees too. Let’s take a look at defining these services, the fees and local listings as a marketing tool.  This will also shed some light on why there are monthly management fees by the marketing services. Local Listing Data Services We have discussed this service in a previous article about companies that provide “get listed” services.  What this service provides is to push your business information as data into local listing websites.  The entire process is automated through programs known as API’s.  There are limitations as to what information can be submitted.  They certainly do not allow you to protect your brand by claiming your listing through this process.  The claiming process is most important as it allows you to manage your local business listing not only with marketing information, but also consumer reviews.  Our argument with this service is that most businesses are already listed and why do you need to get “get listed”?  Fees for this service are less than $100 per year Local Listing Marketing Services This type of service is the service that will allow you to use your local business listing as a local marketing tool to reach the local consumers through web searches and mobile searches most effectively.  Because this service is a combination of automation and manual labor the fees are higher and range with one time setups to ongoing monthly management fees.  Here are some of the services that are included with local business listing marketing services. One question you should ask yourself. Do you have the time resources to manage this marketing tool at multiple local listing websites?  This will certainly help answer if you need help with this process. 1. It is important to claim your listing at multiple local listing websites.  If the marketing service is only with Google, then you are missing out at a variety of other sources ling Bing, Ask, City Search, Local.com, Yelp, Yahoo, Merchant Circle and many others.  Consumers and mobile application developers will decide which website they will use for local business listing reviews and data.  Google is not the powerhouse in this case. 2. Claim your listing to protect your brand from being hijacked .  Claiming is a crucial and important first step with local business listings.  If you do not claim the listing at multiple local listing websites you are open to hijackings and having your information re-directed to another business or criminals pursuing the local consumers.  This is the part that tends to cause much of the frustrations you read about from business owners on the web. 3. Update your listing with your business marketing information to include not only text copy for web searches and mobile searches, but categories, photos, coupons, videos, images, etc.  Because this information changes throughout the year (particularly your coupons, offers, discounts and events) the monthly management service will help insure everything is update to date at multiple locations. 4. Clean-up mis-matched data .  Because local listing websites get their data from multiple sources, businesses are finding that there are multiple listings for a single address of their business.  Deleting or merging these listings is an important process to insure the duplicates are not hijacked or consumers posting reviews in a listing that is not monitored. 5. Monitor your consumer reviews .  Your customers have already been posting their reviews about you at multiple local listing websites. Monitoring and subsequently managing these reviews at multiple local listing websites for local public relations is an important process and one that will be new to most local businesses.  This is also included with most local listing marketing services within their monthly management fee. 6. Citations are in important step in this process to have your listing ranked higher on web searches amongst the listings next to the map.  This is not always included in the lower priced marketing services and an addition to be considered as this industry and marketing tool evolves and matures in the upcoming years. Future technologies will make local business listings more effective as a local business marketing tool.  QR Codes, mobile applications, mobile coupons and other technologies will have to be managed for the local business to insure they are being used to be most effective. Hopefully the above information has helped you at least categorize the different local business listing services between data services and marketing services.  The benefits of the marketing services far outweigh the data services and are the most effective to reaching the local consumer. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Local Business Listing Marketing vs. Data

Blogging for Bucks: 8 Tips to Earn Pay for Your Say

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Unless you’ve been living up under a rock lately, you’ve heard of the Internet phenomenon known as blogging. What many people don’t know is that blogging is no longer just a recreational pursuit for folks to vent their repressed feelings, showcase their creative work, or promote a personal agenda. It’s been elevated to an art form and an avenue where authors establish their expertise, expand their platforms, and savvy writers get pay for their say. Since I started, I’ve had the pleasure of being paid to produce blog posts on everything from jazz reviews, to personal opinions, to how-tos. And you can too. But there’s a method to it. Even though it’s not a “perfect science” it does require a systematic approach. Here’s how to work it: Do your homework. Study other blogs—the popular ones and the new kids on the block. What makes them successful? Where do they miss the mark? What’s the tone? The word count? The take-away value? Write right and write tight. Blogs categorically require a different type of writing than other genres of writing. Most are more informal and conversational in tone. Very few call for word counts of over 700 words per post. To hone your skills and establish your expertise, do a few guest posts on other blogs. Ideally the ones that boast a high fan base and are considered leaders in the blog field. Doing so gives you credibility, visibility, and success by association. Network- –Just like in the corporate arena, sometimes it’s not what you know but who you know that can make the difference. Tap into your available resources and folks who are in-the-know through Facebook, Twitter, and online communities in which you interact. Follow directions to find the road to success. For example, if a blog ad for a paying gig calls for 2 samples of 500 words and a resume, don’t send one sample of 1000 words and links to work you’ve created on line. It’s the easiest way to get fired before you’re hired! Make it brief- –When applying for work, or presenting your work for consideration, be brief but substantive. Recognize that less is sometimes more. Have goals and a game plan. How much would you like to earn monthly? Yearly? Which blogs are the ones you aspire to write for and how often? What will your niche be? Is there anyone who can serve as a mentor to advise and guide you? These are a few key questions to consider. Write what you know- –The traditional philosophy of writing also applies with blogging. Pen posts on topics with which you have experience and familiarity. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should never venture into new territories or attempt to expand your knowledge base. You should. But make that one of your future goals once you establish some footing and a fan base. Here are a few places that you can find work in the blogging field: www.Bloggingpro.com – One of the industry leaders, Bloggingpro has recently introduced a blogging job board to its many services and features offered to its readers. www.craigslist.org – usually found mixed in with regular writing gigs. www.bloggerjobs.biz Offers part-time and full time work at various rates. www.freelancewritinggigs.com A reputable source with an array of offerings from different industries. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Blogging for Bucks: 8 Tips to Earn Pay for Your

Creating Urgency in Your Sales Copy

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Humans are apathetic creatures by nature.  We don’t bother to take action unless we’re threatened.  Back when we were wearing pelts and living in caves, a “threat” was a life or death situation – but our evolutionary roots are still there today.  Except instead of saving our young children from a saber-tooth tiger, we’re fending off sales messages that threaten to quickly snatch our cash right out of our wallets. For online businesses – this is a state of mind we want to engage in our prospects. But the only way to do that with the printed word is to create urgency.  Keep in mind that you have to start with an offer so unbelievably good – your buyer already instinctively wants it before they even reach for their credit card.  No amount of urgency in the world will budge a bad product. Likewise, saying you have “Only 5 Left” when it’s really a digital product and there’s an unlimited supply – will serve to do more harm than good to your business.  I’ve actually known users who have seemingly bought “the last 5 copies” of a resale rights product so as to minimize their competition.  Imagine their anger and disbelief when they refresh the page hoping to see “0 left” but instead getting the same “Only 5 Left!” message.  Word travels fast on the internet if you don’t back up your words with real action. Create Urgency with Digital Products There are several ways to create urgency in sales of digital products without being dishonest.  You can limit the number of bonuses to the first X buyers or limit the timeframe that bonuses will be available.  Remind them of the pain, insecurity or problem they’ll keep facing without your product or service . Enthusiastic, detailed testimonials can help create urgency too – but subconsciously reminding the buyer of how relieved/happy/secure they’ll feel as a result of ordering.  When someone reads a testimonial that shows concrete (and realistic results) – such as “ I was able to lose one dress size within just two weeks – a total of 10 pounds of pure body fat, gone!” your customer can’t help but imagine themselves getting the same results. Experimenting With Urgency Offers No matter what you sell, it’s crucial that you test different offers to see which ones people respond best to – and when.  If the offer is only available for the next 24 hours – make certain (or have programming in place) that takes down the page when time is up (and puts up a mailing list form in case people missed out and want to be notified if or when the offer returns!) This way, you’ll stay true to your original promise and create urgency via real scarcity, while bringing through interested leads who waited too long to act on that particular offer. What Has Worked for You? What are some ways you’ve added urgency to your copy? What worked, and what didn’t? Share your results in the comments below! Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Creating Urgency in Your Sales

Paid Internet Search Inventor Applies the Same Model to Twitter

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From the Idealab, the same guys who invented the paid internet search model comes a new startup called Tweetup . TweetUp hopes to make Twitter more relevant for everyone and finally put a stop to the notion that Twitter is all about noise. It’s the fastest and easiest way to find the best tweets and tweeters as well as a reliable way of finding targetted Twitter followers. Basically, what TweetUp does is to boost tweeters on any topic to the top of search results – that is raising these relevant and useful tweets above the usual Twitter noise. TweetUp will also give these important and targetted tweets persistence against the backdrop of millions of  tweets posted every minute. To carry out its tasks and services, TweetUp has built an algorithm that assesses the quality, relevance, and influence of tweets and tweeters.  It then combines selected tweets with a bid-based marketplace. TweetUp is composed of  three parts – the destination site, third party widgets and the advertiser product. The destination site ranks Twitter results by time and via an algorithm to determine which of them should go higher.  TweetUp splits revenue from ads 50/50. Potential TweetUp advertisers can enter their bids via impressions, new follower or click through to an end URL. If you want to find ways of promoting your tweets on search engine results, you may want to sign up at TweetUp. They are currently giving away $100 credit towards ads. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Paid Internet Search Inventor Applies the Same Model to