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Making Your Business Social

Is Your Small Business a Candidate for the New Foursquare Ads?

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Foursquare ad example
How Ads Look on Foursquare

Mashable is reporting that location based social networking company Foursquare is currently testing a new advertising platform intended for small business, by letting large advertisers like Burger King, Gap and Starwood Hotels to test promote themselves with the platform. These listings appear in Foursquare when a customer gets close to a business’ physical location. Small businesses already had the capability to offer discounts when a user checked in to a location, but now Foursquare is providing them with a way to attract geographically close customers by showing an image ad and/or review by a previous Foursquare user.

Why this may be a good idea for Foursquare

Foursquare is a location-based social networking site for mobile devices, such as smartphones. Typically its users “check in” at various venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific app. Their specific location is available through the GPS in their mobile device. Foursquare has up to now been a means for consumers to promote their favorite bars, hangouts and restaurants. Now, those places will be able to promote themselves directly to consumers. While Foursquare has gathered some 25 million registered users, they made just $2 million dollars last year, according to The Wall Street Journal. They are clearly searching for ways to pump up the earnings.

How the new ads work

The way this works is the ad platform targets Foursquare users determined by their locations and check-in histories. Merchants will and do have a chance to target nearby consumers with particular tastes – a predilection for fine dining, for instance, or customers who had previously checked-in to their store. Merchants in this program have the capability to turn off and on their Foursquare promotions when needed, and are charged similar to a pay per click model, that is, they are going to be charged only on a “per action” basis (when a user actually taps on a promoted listing instead of merely viewing it). So far, Foursquare is charging $0.50 to $3 per action, but that’s likely to change when it is introduced to the masses. Foursquare CRO Steven Rosenblatt said, “Small businesses are willing to pay for local advertising if it makes sense.”

Google Plus For Business – Quick Tips You Can Use Today

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Google+ Services Integration
All Things Lead to Google+

Has Google+ become an afterthought in your social media marketing plan? When is the last time you even took a look over there? You may even be asking yourself if Google+ is or ever will be a viable tool for your business. You’re not alone because many are still divided whether or not to even spend any time or effort on Google+.

Why we feel it’s worthwhile now and in the future!

It’s being shared that Google+ is now outpacing Twitter. Even though this in no way “feels” true, it quite possibly is. Just the proliferation of Gmail and the simplicity of having Google’s entire suite of web services displayed the same time has probably sealed the deal. Not only that, but since Google Plus Local Listings already features such small business services as Zagat, StreetView and Google+ User ratings, it has effectively replaced Yelp.

Also, Google Hangouts has a direct influence on where Google+ is headed as well. The advantage of using a Hangout, as an alternative to perhaps Skype, to do video conferencing is a major plus (no pun intended). Yes, we realize that Hangouts is still a tad clunky and a pain to figure out, however if you do, it’s by far the leader of the pack. Just the integration and automation that Hangouts shares with YouTube is worth the price of admission. (Which of course is free!)

So how are businesses using Google+?

There are a number of uses of Google+ in your small business. Here’s just a few:

  • Build networks of like-minded individuals with Google+ Circles
  • Use #hashtags to allow posts appear in Google search
  • Be sure and Link Google+ to your blog or site, and enjoy the Google Authorship benefit in the search pages
  • Do live video chat with Google Hangouts
  • Use tags in Google+ to reach out to people directly

To experience a wonderfully comprehensive selection of strategies and infographic for Google+, see this post on Copyblogger. Google+ may not feel like it’s worthy of effort just yet, but we feel as though it is both in the present and future!

What SEO Should Startups Make Sure They Do?

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BusinessConflict_Small
Arguing About the Right SEO?

When you say “SEO” to a business owner or manager, it’s hard to know exactly what they are going to think of. It’s a craft that’s rather inexact and challenging to define, much less implement. The idea of the “right” SEO has changed over the years.

A lot of startups tend to ignore it as they get going.

This is a significant mistake.

The key reason why is that it gives Google the wrong impression right from the start. They try to index pages, and without some semblance of SEO, often times they’re either unable to index, index the page incorrectly, or because on-page and internal SEO is such a large part of the search ranking algorithm, bury it so far down the search results it is useless.

That’s a shame, as there are some solutions to begin to do SEO that don’t require a graduate of MIT to accomplish.

Heard about Minimum Viable SEO?

The folks at Priceonomics.com coined the term, “minimum viable SEO“, which means exactly how much SEO can you get by with to start. While not an ideal strategy, it sure beats not doing anything. Here are a few of the items they mentioned, with a few of our own thoughts tossed in because I couldn’t help myself!

Decide on a keyword strategy – This will help you see not just what your site structure will look like, but also how quickly you’ll be into profit. One option is to go after the long tail of search, meaning keywords which are commonly 3-5 words long, often with product or model numbers. They don’t get a ton of searches everyday, but are infinitely easier to rank for. Add a few thousand of these up, and you win. Another way to go is to go after a single keyword, like “auto insurance San Diego” you’ll typically be attempting to rank only your home page. For those who have a business with a local presence, make sure you have local geo-modifiers on your keywords, as in the previously mentioned example.

Use breadcrumb navigation – You’ve seen this before. It is simply a set of links that show where you’ve been on the site, and where you are now. This really is of great help for the searcher, (which Google likes) and takes care of a good deal of internal linkage. Here is what it typically looks like: Home > Tablets > Apple > Ipad 2 3g

Use accurate title tags – Making sure the title tag on your page is accurate, which means it is or contains the keyword you would like that page ranked for, is probably the most important SEO task you can do. Using local geo-modifiers is very important here too.

Performing minimum viable SEO is a good way to start, and infinitely better than doing nothing. Just don’t let it end there!

Are Bellingham Businesses Losing Mobile Customers?

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Have you taken a look lately at the mobile website of your favorite Bellingham businesses on your smartphone? If you have, chances are you didn’t have a great experience.

Our favorite shops have been a bit behind in getting up to speed with their customers. But is it really their fault?

The number of people using their mobile phones to shop online, find local restaurants, and make purchase decisions has grown faster than most business owners are keeping track of. In 2013, over half of all people using mobile phones will be on a smart phone.

U.S. cell phone users: percentage of smartphone users 2010-2016
You will find more statistics at Statista

Personally, I know many people who use their phone or tablet as their primary device for accessing the Internet. When they get to a non-mobile website that is hard to read, they move on to another choice that may be easier to get around. This trend is not going away and we will see it increase further in 2013.

When you think about it, you really don’t expect local business owners to be on top of every trend. Especially trends that grow this quickly. They need to focus on provided a great product and service.

Unfortunately, this often means they can be losing out on growth and profits because they are not found where their customers are looking.

Most businesses will benefit from having a mobile friendly site. The amount it will benefit a business depends on their customers, products and services. The only way to know for sure is to start tracking where website visitors come from. There are ways to check this and find out how many are coming to a website from a mobile device.

If you would like to set that up for you (at no charge) be sure to get in touch with us and mention this blog post.

What businesses do you think could benefit the most from a mobile friendly site?

Mobile Restaurant Websites – Should There Be More?

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Have you ever been out and about when you realize you’re going to have to grab something to eat soon? Or maybe you’re out with friends and you want to try something new.

Chances are you whipped out your smart phone and tried to look up some options.

And more likely than not, you came across a restaurant’s website that was pretty much unusable on your phone. You might think that a mobile restaurant website would be more common. Unfortunately, it’s not.

And it’s not just a problem in Bellingham and Whatcom County. Back in April TechCrunch publshed this article: Study: 95% Of Independent Restaurants Don’t Have Mobile Sites, Only 40% Have Online Menus

Basically, restaurants are losing business by not letting people see what they have to offer when it makes the most sense: when people are out and thinking of somewhere to eat.

For those who think it may not be that important, here’s an example: The Big Fat Fish Co. is a great seafood restaurant in Bellingham. I think the food is great and I enjoy going there. But if I didn’t know the place, heard about it while I was out in town and wanted to try it out for dinner, I would be hard pressed to see exactly what they serve.

mobile restaurant website big fat fish co
A great restaurant. Not so great experience on mobile.
On the other hand, if someone told me that El Gitano has great Mexican food, I would see this when I looked it up on my smart phone:
mobile restaurant website - smartphone friendly
An easy to navigate mobile restaurant site.
See the difference? In the video above I show how you can easily navigate the El Gitano site and get a really good idea of what they offer and the pricing. Great for customers, right?
Eventually the restaurants will come around to having mobile friendly sites, just as most have managed to put up websites. But for now, the ones that get mobile first are most likely to be the winners.
[Disclosure: the El Gitano site mentioned was developed by the staff here at MyFanMachine. Interested in something like this for your own business? Get in touch!]