Google is making a huge push with Google+. The not only want you personally but you business as well. It is vitally important that you pay attention to this and get your business setup on Google + Page and verify it and then get it integrated with your Google Maps/Local/Places listing. This will ensure that when people search for your business that they get the correct information and help them get in contact with you beyond just your address and phone number.
More and more independent research is showing that Google + is influencing the SERPS. Regardless of how Google+ succeeds as a social network it is undeniable that it will be important for your business to show up on the busiest website on the web.
If you are a lawyer you should know about Avvo.com. They have somehow gotten pretty much every registered bar member in the US on their website. Whether the lawyer knows it or not. I suggest that you go there and search for your name. Most of the time when I do this with a client they are quite surprised at what they find. Namely that they have a listing and there is at least one negative review about them.
In this video I talk about claiming your profile, updating it, and finally handling reviews. The good news is that its a whole lot better than Yelp.
Savvy businesses with meeting space are using Meetup.com in creative and profitable ways. You cannot be overly direct but if you handle things right you can get more business to your location. Start off by joining some groups that you have an interest in and see how the communities work to get people together and stay organized overtime. Then introduce yourself to the organizers and see if they might want to use your location for meeting up as a group.
We all know that backing up our computers is something we should do constantly but many of us don’t do it at all. Prevent a major headache and start backing everything up today. In this video Roger discusses a few options for backing up your computer. He also talks about Dropbox which offers a type of backup with a lot of helpful productivity features.
Copyright is a legal action that gives creators control over who does what with the work that they create. When a photographer takes a picture they by default own the copyright to that work and can charge money for its use.
The Internet has allowed the copying of images and anything digital to proliferate beyond the pale. With a few clicks you can have an identical copy of any image on your website or blod and this is not always good. If you are putting other peoples images on your website you need to be very careful or you might get sued.
When you want to use someone elses image you should use an image service like Getty or Shutterstock to ensure that you have full legal and documented permission to use the copyright. While this does cost money you get two benefits: 1) you support the original creator of the work and 2) you aren’t going to get sued.
The other option is to use a Creative Commons image. Creative Commons
The other option is to use a Creative Commons image. Creative Commons was created as an alternative to Copyright to give creators more options when licensing their work. They can give total usage rights to the work so you can use it however you want or they can say that you can use it but not for business. The problem is that the creator can change the license whenever they want leaving you in a precarious position if you use the image on your business website.
The best option is to either take your own photos or hire a professional photographer to take some for you and then give you full rights to the images. The last point is an important one as many photographers will either hide the fact that they are keeping the copyright or will not give it to you unless you pay a lot more money. My recommendation is to leave no options to chance and always get the full rights to the images.
When you post on Facebook or Twitter you are working for free. Facebook makes money serving ads to users but Facebook produces hardly any content at all. The reason so many people are on Facebook is because they are looking at each others content. The more you post on Facebook and get your friends and family to spend time looking at it and the advertisements surrounding them the more Facebook makes. This makes you a digital sharecropper except that you aren’t even getting paid.
This doesn’t mean you should stop using Facebook, it just means you should understand exactly what you are doing there. My suggestion is that you spend more time adding content to your own website where you own the content. Then when Facebook goes away or looses all of your posts you still have the majority of your work.
If you have a website you need analytics otherwise you are flying blind without an instrument panel. Analytics gives you data about how many people are coming to your website, where they are coming from, and what they are doing once they get there. You can track conversions and goals of all types that fit your business needs
We have covered making your own videos now lets talk about where to put them so people can watch online. You can self host the files but the bandwidth required can cost a lot of money, plus performance can be a huge issue. If you are going to host them separately I suggest starting with Youtube. Its free which is nice and since Google owns it they seem to give Youtube videos preference in Organic Results.
For any businesses that has been around longer than 10 years the Yellow Pages were a way of life. If you wanted to be found by someone you needed to be in that big yellow book. Now that we have the Internet and Smartphones the Yellow Pages have become obsolete. Personally I havent looked in one for 10 years and havent had any delivered for more than 3 years. If you want to be found now you need to be online.
Marketers use the term Local Search Engine Optimization(SEO) when talking about replacing what the Yellow Pages Book provided for a company. This is the process of setting up your website and various accounts with companies like Google, Yelp, and others including YellowPages.com with the correct contact information such as your address and phone number. As a business owner you need to be making this transition today so that customers can find your business when they need you most.
Introduction to Facebook for Business. You may not want to be on Facebook but your clients already are and they might be talking about you. Its free to setup an account and it gives you another avenue to connect with your clients.
This video is just a basic introduction to getting your business setup on Facebook.