Foursquare.com and Why Local Business Should Pay Attention

I have been using Foursquare for sometime now and have recently started to see quite a few more people start to join the fast growing social/location based game/app/service. With most of my attention being focused on local search for local businesses and local online advertising on Missouri.me, apps like Foursquare pique my interest and I like to watch their evolution and the way people use them as they evolve.

It is important to not necessarily watch how the early adopters use them since they tend to be power users and their day to day usage will be much different than the mass of users that come in later and are less techie. When I see my wife using Foursquare everyday I start to see how people will really use the service and the power that small businesses will have if they use the service to help draw people into their doors.

The past month (with one of the examples happening today) I have witnessed a couple examples of what will start to happen as the general consumer starts to come online with apps such as this. There is no need to go through all the hype around Foursquare and all the huge projections since all of that has been reported on virtually every tech site in existence so I would prefer to talk real world examples of how it draws people in.

First example is a restaurant in the town Localtek is based in, Spokes is the name of the restaurant, this is a place that I visit on occasion when friends are there. Recently while I was checking into locations on Foursquare I noticed there was a "Special Here" banner at the top of the Foursquare iPhone app. If you click it you could see that Spokes was offering half price burgers to the person that is the Foursquare mayor of Spokes (Foursquare has the concept of Mayor for the person who checks into a location most frequently plus a few other requirements).

So what happens? I start to go to Spokes now because it is a competition to try to get the mayorship, it should be noted I do not even necassarily eat burgers when I go there but based on the competitive factor I start to go so I can check-in. I am sure the special will change at times so why not go for the mayorship so I get future specials.

A little special like that and I show up, and I am sure others have as well. And when people show up to eat at a restaurant they typically bring more people. It all starts to add up. This is a simple example, but this is in a town of less than 20 thousand people. This is not a large city with a huge base of technology focused people. This is rural Missouri and people are taking advantage of this. There is a base of right around 2 million users on Foursquare and I am already having to fight for mayorships.

Now you start to think about local coffee shops offering half price coffees or other specials for mayors, or maybe a restaurant offering something to people who are mayors elsewhere to try to get them to come to their restaurant instead of the other and you start to see some of the power.

Another example is something that happened just today, my wife, daughter and I were in a mall and they were running into "chick" stores so I was browsing a bit. I happened to notice another "Special" banner and it was for a small watch kiosk. You could unlock the special by checking in.

So what happens, I go check out the watch kiosk and since I checked in I got a free watch cleaning. Small stuff but now my wife and daughter start browsing. As you can imagine other consumers will do this same thing and this will drive additional purchases since people show up for the free watch cleaning. What an easy and great way to drive people to stop at a kiosk most people would just walk on by.

These are just a couple examples but as you can see this is something local businesses will have to watch and pay attention too. With apps on both the iPhone and Google Android based phones based on location launching everyday and those with disposable income being the ones most likely to have them it is no longer possible for a business that has been around for dozens of years to ignore the shift happening to local online and in the mobile world.

Foursquare is just one example. Watch as many more come to market as people figure out new and unique ways to tap this new technology. For those of us in the tech world it may not seem new but until recently there was not a true way for local businesses to be able to tap into this marketing channel.

5 Free Social Media Tips For Local Businesses

Although this blog has been a lot quieter the past couple months I have been very active working with small businesses on everything from selecting the right domain name for their website to using social media to promote their business effectively.

As much as we may be a for profit business we also truly feel it is our mission to help educate the local business owners who understand they need to move a portion of their marketing efforts online but either a) think the cost is too high or b) feel like it is too time consuming or technical.

One of the things that we show as part of the holistic marketing model they need to look at now that they can no longer just use the legacy methods (i.e. print) as their only form of advertising is social media.

Over 50 percent of their customers are now looking online but most have not shifted any of their marketing spend to online (more on that in a future post). Since they may not feel comfortable spending money online as they are just now in the beginning of the education process we feel it is important to help them with low cost or even free online marketing tips, in many cases these are social media tips.

Here are 5 tips that a local small business can use today to help promote their business for free using social media:

Use Proper Links To Your Website When Posting On Facebook:

One of the most frequent mistakes I see people make when promoting their website on Facebook is not actually making the link to their website active, for example if I was to share something about this blog and put the following you would not be able to click on it and go directly to this site, instead you would have to hope your friends on Facebook either copy and paste the link or type it in, people will not typically actively do this:

Check out my blog at BruceMarler.com

Instead you need to add http:// in front of the link or website name to make sure it is an active link in what you are sharing on Facebook, for example it should look like this:

Check out my blog at http://BruceMarler.com

If you do the above on Facbeook people can click directly on the link to the site and this will drive significant more clicks to your business website.

Create a Facebook Page For Your Business Not A Personal Account:

One of the more frequent mistakes that people make when first thinking about using Facebook for business promotion is using a personal Facebook account rather than a Facebook Page. This happens more frequently than you may realize.

It is best to keep your personal account separate from your business account. This will help you promote to your customers rather than family and old high school friends who may not be interested in a business thousands of miles away and on the other side keep you from posting vacation pictures to customers rather than your family.

Facebook pages are free. They are great for interacting with your customers and promoting special offers. They also allow you to get top of mind awareness with your customers after they had forgotten about you. As many people may visit your website, do business with you, and then move on by taking advantage of a Facebook Page to put links to your website and specials and events you may be having you can keep your brand or business in front of customers who have visited you in the past.

Claim Your Facebook Username For Your Facebook Page:

One of the easiest things you can do to protect your business brand online is by claiming your Facebook Username for your business page. This means that you no longer have a long string of characters as the link to your page, instead you have a short and brandable link to your fan page, example is http://facebook.com/localtek

You can see exactly what brand is being promoted (Localtek) instead of something much longer like this:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/CITY-NAME-MO/YOUR_BUSINESS_NAMEs/7708322067?ref=ts

As you can see the top link is much more effectively promoting your local business online. To do this you can read this How To Set Your Facebook Page Username Tutorial.

Promote Your Facebook and Twitter Accounts Offline:

As much as we online marketing folks like to believe that the world revolves around online marketing and nothing else matters that is not true, more and more a holistic approach is needed when promoting a business. One easy way to take advantage of mixing various promotion types is to make sure you add your Facebook Page and Twitter account on any print materials you may have or even make sure you mention in any radio promotions you may be doing as well.

As an example we recently designed new business cards for our company and on the front we have standard corporate business card information (website, address, etc) but on the back we have our social media information to make sure people know where they can connect with us through our social media presence online.

If you are already paying to have materials created you should promote your online presence. If they become your friend on Facebook or follow you on Twitter even after they through away that business card you still have access to them when your promote yourself on either service.

And one more tip:

Suggest Your Facebook Page To Your Friends:

To be clear as I say suggest your page I do not mean be spammy, do not promote it daily to all of your friends but if you are in business and need to promote why not start with people that are comfortable with you and are likely to accept your Facebook page suggestion?

That way when you put out promotions they are likely to "Like" them and this in turn means it is likely to be seen by their friends as well which begins to take advantage of what social media is all about when it comes to business promotion, peer to peer recommendations. A recommendation from a friend will always go further than any advertisement someone could do.

In many cases we have heard customers tell us that they have created a Facebook Page but could not understand how to get people to see it. The step missed was suggesting to friends and family to get things moving.

The above tips may be simple but they will help get you moving at no cost, if you have further tips feel free to post in the comments.

A Few Facebook How-To’s

I have had a very large amount of people using the posts that I had previously did concerning How To Create A Facebook Fan Page and How To Set A Facebook Page Username. I thought I would do a quick post to give new readers and followers links to the previous posts rather than sending out the same email over and over with links to them. Also if you would like to connect with me on Facebook do so at Facebook.com/brucemarler or you can also become a fan of our properties at:

Facebook.com/missourime

Facebook.com/localtek

Here are links to the how to and Facebook info posts:

How To Create A Facebook Fan Page For Your Website

Setting Your Facebook Username For A Fan Page

How To Promote Your Facebook Fan Page

Facebook Fan Page Vs Facebook Group

It has really been great to see the explosion lately in usage of these social media tools to tie together a companies web presence with their social networking presence. With over 400 million users on Facebook and people spending more and more time on there it is more growing more important everyday to make sure you business is found not only in basic search but also in Facebook search as well.

Is Linkedin Gaining Traction Due To The Bad Job Market?

We have had quite a few seminars in recent weeks in various parts of the state of Missouri and during these seminars I ask several different questions related to technology usage. Some of these are about local search and print media trends but many are around social media and how it relates to how people are promoting their businesses online.

I always ask for a show of hands to find out how many people in the room have Facebook accounts (always more than 60 percent, typically way more), Twitter (typically 40 to 50 percent), and then Linkedin.

As someone who thinks Linkedin is one of the most underutilized social networks for getting business done it has always been interesting to see the number of hands raised, typically less than 20 percent, sometimes close to zero.

Why is that? Because most people do not understand that social networks can be used to get business done, with most peoples first knowledge of social networking coming from stories about MySpace (My who???) or from the early days of Facebook people cannot be faulted for not understanding the importance of social media and business but it has always been a nice feeling to see that look in peoples eyes once tools (and that is what it is) like Linkedin are explained and case studies shown.

Well, I have noticed a major uptick in Linkedin accounts when I ask for the show of hands these days. The percentage of people with accounts increased in every seminar we have had over the past month or so.

Why? I think I know.

With the economy being what it is and the tough job market continuing I think people are using every avenue they can. Not Linkedin is not just for making contacts, it has been another online source for the job hunt. A great tool to use when Monster.com is just not cutting it.

With Linkedin being a social network based on trust it seems only logical that people would actually start using it for job hunting, sure people have been doing this for years but I think there are quite a few newcomers that are just now figuring out the power of using peer recommendations for finding jobs.

I am glad to see this network starting to gain traction even with those not in the corporate or tech world. That is usually the biggest hurdle for online networks like this, getting to mainstream consumers is never easy. I think it is starting to happen.

Real Time Search And The Google Superbowl Commercial

During the Superbowl I did a couple blog posts with the second one being firmly planted in my mind as a good test for what real time search can do for traffic and why paying attention to real time SEO for certain events can help drive visitors.

Being in the field we are in I was interested to see if Google would do a search commercial or something around the Nexus One, I was actually pleasantly surprised to see it was a commercial based on search, actually all the different things search can do for someone using all the capabilities Google has. Most people are not aware of the way they can use search and this was a nice venue to show them.

All that said, I knew there would be a ton of search done on Google Superbowl Commercial and although I had real honest commentary on the subject I also knew that it would be a real time search trend that would trigger Google into having their scrolling box in their search results page scrolling news as it happened from Twitter and blogs.

Well, the results, in a very short period of time I had hundreds of visitors to the one post, you can see a bit of what I am talking about by looking at the keywords  sending traffic to my blog below for just a few seconds, click on the image for the details:

This is the tail end of the real time traffic that came in, I wish I would of caught it from start to finish but this will give you a good idea of the terms that were sending traffic from the real time search box that scrolls on Google.

Just an example of how social media and taking advantage of it can do.

All About Search for Facebook

On Facebooks 6th birthday they launched a new layout that will be available  possibly tonight for  80 million of their 400 million users.

You read that right they now have 400 million users, not bad for a 6 year old company, what is really interesting is that the company started with a focus on social networks for the college crowd and now the fastest growing group on the site is women above the age of 50, how is that for covering every market, I am lazy tonight and did not go dig up the exact age range group but it says alot for the service that it does attract all types of consumers.

And that is what it is all about, learning what consumers are talking about, buying, recommending, etc. Facebook is gathering data at a level only Google could imagine. Except, some would argue, the Facebook data could be even more valuable.

All that said, today Facebook also showed they are dead serious about search, by making the search box more visible and prominent in the layout users are more likely to search Facebook which will make the site even more sticky.

For an idea of how prominent search is now check out this posterous link.

This may seem subtle, but changes like this can make a huge difference in user behavior.

More and more this makes me realize how social and real time SEO will matter to those that focus on search marketing. Makes me glad I picked up SEORealtime.com...

Apple iPad And The Future Of Your Domains

I do not blog about it much but I am a bit of a gadget junkie, I had been waiting for the day that some sort of Apple tablet would be launched, now we know that is officially the Apple iPad. I even held off buying a new Amazon Kindle this past month as the rumor mill started heating up since it was obvious any Apple device would have more functionality than just reading books. I am not really big on single purpose devices so it was worth waiting.

As much as their may be a few people saying the iPad is not the end all be all of tablet computing devices they are really nitpicking items that the general user of the device will not care about, what you need to really look at is how the Apple iPhone changed the idea of what a mobile phone could be. It changed the way you accessed information and provided easy access to casual gaming without having to carry a separate device like a Nintendo DS.

With the growth of social networking due to the non-tech crowds acceptance and use of Facebook (have I mentioned that Facebook topped Google in traffic over Christmas, yes I have, and I just did again) apps for social networking were some of the most downloaded and used on the Apple iPhone. As a matter of fact Twitter apps were some of the most requested reviews on iFones.com during its initial launch.

Before I go any further on my thoughts on this Domain Name Wire did a story on this tonight as well, I had planned on doing mine later this week but wanted to give Andrew some link love while his article was still fresh.

And on that note, I think it is important to note that a source such as Domain Name Wire has pointed out the concerns with how devices like Apple iPad are changing how people access information. Although many domainers, and I am sorry to say this, have their heads in the sand and REALLY do not want to admit the times are changing they better be ready for it because it is happening even if you do not want it too.

I spoke to a few folks at the conference about type-in traffic and although the people that spoke to Andrew for his story may not be seeing it the people I spoke to admitted openly that type-in traffic had declined rapidly over the past few years. Now I have nothing that can show exact data but that coincides pretty directly with the growth of the iPhone, better smartphones in general, and also social networking.

Why does the iPhone and now the iPad matter?

It  is all about the apps and also about the way people use browsers on their mobile phone. This is also the same thing on all the Android based mobile phones that are coming out, it is all about driving people to the internet through applications, it is the same information provided in an easier to access manner with more functionality thrown in than a typical website allows. People like this, the app store is making Apple millions/billions of dollars. This is not going to change, you cannot hide from this anymore. The Apple iPad is going to accelerate this, probably more so than we can even comprehend right now.

To give you an idea, within 48 hours after the iPad was announced I had 26 emails from people to iFones.com with tips about their upcoming plans for apps that will be optimized for the iPad. Most were small time developers, but so were many of the developers that now rule the app store.

You cannot hide from this....

I typically access Facebook and Twitter from my iPhone equally as much as I do from my laptop, this means I never hit a browser. With the iPad this will increase even more, with the larger screen and other applications that will be available on it there are many times I am not even sure I will have to take a laptop with me for travel. This changes things.

With visual and verbal search on the iPhone and now on the iPad typing in a website name will become something that is more of a hassle than anything, neither visual or verbal search is big right now, but it is coming.

Look, I hate to see type-in traffic decrease as the next person but I also know that there are trends you cannot fight, you have to see what is coming and plan on how to take advantage of the trends. Social media, mobile computing devices, these are things that change the way people access the sites we have.

Your goal should not be to fight them, it should be to find out how to take advantage of them. It is possible you just have to find the way.

SEO+Social Media+Mobile Apps=Success

Staying in the same place = Failure

Social Media + Mobile Search + Local Search = Success

If you have not read all the news about social networking sites being the future of how we access information instead of search engines then you must not be reading what is happening in the online world around you. I will help you with the relevant news articles in just a minute.

One thing I think people are missing sometimes is how the BLEND of mobile and local search along with the easy access to Facebook and Twitter on a mobile phone is making it an absolute must to have a plan on how to integrate all of these technologies together when you plan on promoting a product or service. The future is now and if you are not using all methods available then you are doing an injustice to your business promotion online.

For those that may be social media doubters and who do not realize that many people use search on their mobile phone before typing in a name (and I have not even mentioned visual search and verbal search) suddenly search is all that matters at times, be very careful basing everything you have on type-in traffic. Facebook has 350 million users and bypassed Google for traffic during the Christmas holiday, do you think Facebook is going somewhere? Yes they are, UP!

The people using Facebook (and even Twitter) are not typing in domain names, they are taking a friends recommendation without even looking at the site name. Sure the domain name is important for branding and I would never discount that, and for search an exact match name helps, but when all you are is a link hidden behind a URL shortening service that is not quite as important.

If you are still hiding in the dark and believing this change is not coming here are a few great articles to read:

Why Facebook PPC is Crucial

Why Is Google Afraid Of Facebook

How Social Media Helps Website Marketing - My own example of usage.

Social Media Impact

If the stories do not show you what is happening then I cannot help you. This does not mean that you should not have a website with a great name, but the people growing up with the Internet today do not use it like those of us who had it come to be during the midst of our lives.

If your only plan is to buy a great domain name and wait for the type-in traffic to come you may be surprised at your competitor coming up behind you and using the power of social media to drive more traffic that has been recommended by a trusted peer network that converts even better.

Use all the tools together and success can be yours, ignore the holistic marketing approach at your own peril.

2+2=5

How Social Media Helps Website Marketing

One of the things I was curious to see was how much traffic I could get to my new Hyperlocal SEO site that I launched a few days back. As with any new site getting awareness and traffic to it can be a challenge unless you are putting an advertising budget in place.

With this site though I thought it would be a valuable tool to see what having an established blog along with Twitter and Facebook could do. As someone who has seen the benefits of what it can do for a site like this one and what I have witnessed on even small business sites in rural Missouri I knew social media can have quite the impact.

In reality I was hoping for something in the range of 50 visitors or so would be a good start for the first few days then build up links from there and continue to use Twitter and Facebook to promote new posts.

Well, I was wrong, WAY wrong.

Here is the number of visits per day:

Jan 18th (launch day, partial day) - 239

Jan 19th - 246

Jan 20th (partial, data as of 6:30 or so CST) - 155

Do you think that could of happened without the power of social media, and in this case I can see that Twitter was the larger portion of that?

The answer is no, to launch a new site in such a competitive niche as local search would of been a long process. I cannot wait to see what happens as new writers come on board.  A special thanks to George Pickering again for his commitment to contributing to the site, just wait until the blog gets put into the mix at TargetAudience.com which will have real small business owners reading it daily in their feed, nice name George is working with there, cannot wait to see how that goes!

Yellow Page Decline Continues While Facebook Search Grows

During this past week a couple different things happened both worthy of their own blog post but time never really allowed me to get them done so I am getting them out together.

We all know that the Yellow Pages (and all copy cats) have had a continued decline in the usage of their print version, no secrets there. If early indications from real life examples are a sign of an accelerating move of their customers to smaller, less expensive ads then this year it could be a real scary ride for the industry.

A couple examples:

• While meeting with a large regional bank this week the marketing director indicated they cut their budget to a very small percentage for this year as compared to previous years based on the trends of people moving online. The person indicated that they previously had full page ads in their section of the Yellow Pages but had decided to move to the smallest listing available with a logo. How is that for a significant shift. When a conservative regional bank is making moves like that and starting to put more of their money into online marketing you know it is going to be a tough year.
• A fast growing local restaurant actually moved completely away from any paid listing in the Yellow Pages and moved back to the completely free listing. They thought it made more sense to focus their effort on expanding their web presence.

What I find particularly interesting is that the bank, who sets a yearly marketing budget and starts implementing it as soon as 2010 starts, has made such a strong move away from such a long running tradition as full page ads in their regional Yellow Page edition. This tells  me that last year was horrible for the Yellow Pages but now even the most rural and conservative of businesses are pulling out, in other words, even the strongholds in the rural regions are starting to move away.

Now on to Facebook, over the past month and a half I have seen a STRONG, and I should emphasize STRONG move upward in the amount of traffic I am receiving from Facebook search. I had read quite a bit about Facebook and the work they were putting into their search functions and had paid quite a bit of attention to that and had actually tested some things around that to see how it affected traffic to various sites.

Well the verdict is in and the Facebook dream scenario is happening more and more, Facebook would love for people not to go to Google to search (which is one of Googles biggest fears obviously), and with the amount of traffic I am seeing from Facebook search for quite a few different keyword terms it tells me that people are starting to be even more sticky to Facebook. Hopefully I can test a few scenarios with this soon and report back with some real numbers, but I can say that for certain terms that I rank well for in Google that I am getting just as much traffic from Facebook from them. A little side note, Facebook web search is powered by Bing....

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