Hard at work but prepared for St. Patrick’s Day!
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2mdGwvQ
via IFTTT
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Sunset at El Timon! (at Restaurante El Timon, San Juan Del Sur)
Sunset at El Timon! (at Restaurante El Timon, San Juan Del Sur)
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2mdDB6t
via IFTTT
Waiting for the Baho. A typical Nicaragua dish. (at Asados...
Waiting for the Baho. A typical Nicaragua dish. (at Asados Kandy")
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2mT8f23
via IFTTT
The Fundamentals of Phoenix Search Engine Optimization Revealed
The Battle Over Phoenix Search Engine Optimization and How to Win It
Search engine optimization is a vital part of any internet marketing campaign. Keywords are king in regards to search engine marketing.
Locating a full service and skilled search engine optimization company with integrity, wisdom and experience is a hard task in the modern market. In other words, search engine optimization enables people to discover the information they require on the net. We make sure that navigation is suitably made to guarantee a search friendly architecture. Through proper keyword study and selection we’re able to attain high search engine rankings for our clients.
You’ve worked hard on your own marketing platform. however, it doesn’t appear to be getting the results you’d hoped for. Because most web users depend on internet search engines such as Google or Bing to get products and services, using search engine optimization services as an integrated part of an internet marketing strategy creates an entire lot of sense. Additionally, we’ll use our keyword research tools to produce a list of the very searched terms for your personal business category. Inbound marketing is easily the most efficient marketing way of internet business.
Phoenix Search Engine Optimization Secrets That No One Else Knows About
As an optional company, we will install Google Analytics on your site to offer detailed traffic reporting. Search Engine Optimization (search engine optimization) can mean various things. SEO is the terrific equalizer. Very Good SEO can lead to a substantial quantity of traffic from Organic” search outcomes.
They use internet search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and countless others. We’ve got genius computer technicians who are able to help design your site and code the search engine marketing content so you don’t have to think about a thing. This can assist you better determine if they’re the correct company to deal with your sites SEO.
There are numerous ways your website’s content could be optimized to rank higher in search engine outcomes. This is the reason it’s important that you rank on the highest part of the search engine results page in order that users can simply locate your site. You need to optimize your web site for local searches because people are attempting to find things which are close to their own location. Without being aware of what search term you’re hoping to really get the website to rank for, there isn’t any manner you can properly optimize for them.
Pay-Per-Click gets your ad on the initial page of search results IMMEDIATELY, wherever your search engine optimisation efforts take a while to develop. With more than 80% of the whole website traffic coming from search websites such as Google, it’s safe to suppose that our search engine optimisation services will be convenient. Bing offers much more than just search outcomes.
The Basic Facts of Phoenix Search Engine Optimization
What a lot of small business owners aren’t familiar with is just how to make and manage a thriving site. With our community lead generation expertise as well as experience, we can get the most out of your site and bring you additional money than you may have ever made before. If you’re interested in working with a search engine optimisation company which has a proven reputation for success and certainly will deliver your business a considerable return on investment, then TOP1 is the best choice for a no non-sense way of search engine optimization. No matter if you like to maintain your marketing within the neighborhood area, or if you prefer to dominate the nation, we can allow you to supercharge your company with our affordable online marketing campaigns that have been designed particularly for YOUR business as well as your budget.
Also, we can offer premium quality website design, marketing consulting in addition to far more. For a little business in Phoenix, it means you could make buyers find your merchandise or services far more cheaply. SEO is a critical portion of a prosperous website launch, and will signify the difference between a site that converts well, bringing in new users and customers on a normal basis, also a dead website that does just cost you money to upkeep. This goes quite a way to make sure that customers have the ability to access your web site in future.
Want to Know More About Phoenix Search Engine Optimization?
We’ll consult with you to truly be certain that the essence of your site isn’t compromised and that you’re satisfied with the content we create. It might have a little longer but doing this will definitely permit us to get your web site back onto page one. Be assured, the expert site designed by Phoenix will help your company grow like never before, and following some time you’d notice the rise in web traffic on your web site and thus the success would come your way with a straightforward but wise selection.
Our comprehensive search engine optimisation campaigns involve a systematic way of creating a significant internet presence. In this time, businesses are employing online search engine optimisation strategies to enhance Web Presence within the digital world. TOP1 tailors each search engine optimization campaign to fulfill the needs of your site along with your goals.
from WordPress http://ift.tt/2c6Vv3o
via IFTTT
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2mdAons
via IFTTT
Search Engine Optimization Phoenix Ideas
Hence, you should realize how important it’s for your web site to rank on top of main search engines. On-line visitors use the aid of search engines to locate anything online.
It’s also wise to submit your site to different search engine directories such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others. They consistently convert a considerable variety of visitors to buyers, but they should rely on various sorts of paid advertising to receive visitors to their own websites, since they don’t rank in the various search engines. The more complicated The relevance of your site, the greater in the search engines list of keyword-responsive sites it’s going to be. This is the reason it’s important that you rank on the highest part of the search engine results page in order that users can certainly locate your site.
There are several search engine marketing companies that provide search engine optimization services. In case you have a world wide web business or intend to place your homebased company on the net, you ought to put money into search engine optimization. These studies demonstrate that search engine optimization is a significant small business investment. In other words, search engine optimization enables people to get the information they want on the world wide web.
Folks use search engines to locate goods and merchandises that they need as promptly and efficiently as possible. As an example, 1 person may utilize a search engine to discover a particular company, and another might use their cell phone.
Search Engine Optimization Phoenix Ideas
Believe it or not believe it, obtaining a top 10 ranking is rather easy. Keep in mind that your website is really not the just one that undergoes optimization, and that there’s absolutely just one position for each one of the Top 50 ranking for every search engine. Search Engine Optimization (search engine optimization) combines numerous practices that have been found to improve page rank. Page relevance is among the most crucial elements in creating a search engine optimization strategy.
Using affordable search engine marketing is the greatest approach to begin the marketing strategy online. Ryno Strategic Solutions offers Search Engine Marketing (SEM) services which are customized for every client so as to fulfill their precise objectives and objectives. Also, we can offer top quality website design, marketing consulting and much more. Within this online age, to become successful in almost any business it is critical to have a whole web presence.
The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization Phoenix That You Will be Able to Learn From Starting Right Away
There are many companies that will give search engine optimization, but the appropriate Atlanta SEO company will take this approach. To do this, you should optimize your site, either by yourself or through a search engine optimization Consultant who’s equipped to supply your site with different search engine optimization services. In selecting a search engine optimization consultant, make certain to look at its clients and find out how popular they truly are. Call Website Design Phoenix for search engine optimisation services today, and join for our free search engine marketing consultation.
Their search engine marketing methods ought to be transparent and clear. On-page SEO encompasses all optimization practices with a direct effect on your own physical site.
What is Really Happening with Search Engine Optimization Phoenix
Most website owners possess the alternate issue. There are a large variety of things that enter play when improving the web site ranking of your own small business and this includes the URL structure along with the content. When a site places a link on their site to a page inside your site, you receive a back link. Actual utility of your own website If your web site is just a solitary service or product web site, you will need loads of search engine optimization services so as to drive as much of your own addressable market to your internet website.
WebDesign.inPhoenix.biz can build any sort of business website. Schedule a complimentary consultation today and discover how we can help drive traffic to your own site, and boost your profits. Before you go about beginning any business on the internet, you got to conduct research properly. By creating a business relationship with our company, you may remain at the very edge of these changes so that we may assist you to ensure your website stays relevant, as well as your business proceeds to thrive.
We provide consultations and training that can help you make improved decisions about your own marketing requirements. It’s all up to you to really make a decision as to what measures you intend to adopt for popularizing your organization.
Finding Search Engine Optimization Phoenix on the Web
You will discover that we’re able to assist you to narrow off your marketing to be able to reach your target audience. As a neighborhood business, it truly is important your website is readily accessible to your own community target marketplace.
Locally targeted markets for people who don’t need or desire an extensive web consumer base. For a little business in Phoenix, it means that one may make buyers find your goods or services much more cheaply. On the internet, there are plenty of people doing business through selling a multitude of products. This is due to a number of companies out there that are in reality out to con unsuspecting small business owners.
from WordPress http://ift.tt/2ckKQAG
via IFTTT
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2mT8tWH
via IFTTT
Phoenix SEO agency Local Business ranker are experts in not only...
Phoenix SEO agency Local Business ranker are experts in not only ranking your business on the search engines but generating leads and using sales funnels to convert sales.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2mdIb4s
via IFTTT
Phoenix SEO agency Local Business Ranker specializes in...
Phoenix SEO agency Local Business Ranker specializes in generating leads and sales funnel conversions.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2mTgxXB
via IFTTT
Why It's a Bad Idea to Only Create Content for Your Specific Target Audience - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by randfish
Knowing what content to create is one of a marketer’s most difficult jobs. It’s all too easy to imagine your target audience and what they already appreciate, then create more of that. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses why that’s a bit short-sighted, and we should have a broader vision.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This one comes to us via submission from email. This is a question from Michael. No other details given, which is totally fine, Michael. So he wanted to know, since he’s working on a content strategy, working on a new blog and having conversations with his manager and his team about, “Hey, should we be writing only extremely focused, narrowly focused content for our specific target audience, or should we be trying to branch out and broaden so that we can reach a bigger audience or a new audience?”
I think this is a fair question, a great question that happens all the time in content strategy and actually in link building strategy discussions around the SEO and content world. So I think it’s actually a pretty bad idea most of the time. Not all the time, but most of the time it’s a pretty bad idea to be extremely narrowly focused on exclusively your audience, your paying customers or the audience that you’re trying to get to pay for your products or services, and I’ll explain why.
General goals of content in SEO & web marketing
So general goals that we usually have around content marketing and content as it relates to SEO and web marketing more broadly is that we want something that potentially
- Directly converts some customers, convinces people to buy from us, convinces them that our products or our services or our knowledge, or whatever it is, is the best in our field.
- Helps us earn press, amplification, and links, certainly so that we can rank higher for all sorts of things, so that we can reach new audiences, so that we get influencers on our side.
- Reach brand new audiences, broad, hopefully new audiences so that we can capture among that new audience some segment or sliver which is going to turn out to be great customers for us, now or in the future, or might be influential to our customers now or in the future.
- Grow our brand’s awareness and authority. We’re just trying to get seen by more folks, more people aware of us so that we can do all sorts of clever things in the future, like have higher click-through rates because people are familiar with us already so that we can do retargeting and remarketing, so that we have more brand credibility of all kinds in all sectors.
Usually, most content goals fall into one of these or several of them.
Now, there’s overlap between them. I haven’t perfectly illustrated this with a great Venn diagram. But in here there is lots of overlap between these different goals. You could have a piece of content that is both designed to earn press and amplification and links and is reaching a broad new audience. Or you might have some content that is directly converting customers that maybe also has some link amplification sorts of overlap. It’s pretty tough to overlap anything else with directly converting customers, but the other three definitely easier to do overlap.
However, most of the content you’re going to produce is going to have a hard time doing anything more than maybe one or two of these. If you’re trying to do three or all four at the same time, you’re going to struggle significantly. This is why folks who say, “I want content that’s going to go viral, that directly converts my customers, that also reaches influencers and helps me reach a broad new group of folks,” you’re asking too much from the same piece of content. It’s going to be a real, real challenge.
Risky business
If you’re only doing that content that’s hyper-specifically targeting these directly converting customers, you’re going to run into some big problems. First off, heavy competition. It tends to be the case if you’re trying to earn that audience’s attention, so too are all your competitors, and they’re probably trying in very, very similar ways. It’s often a competitive advantage to actually be a little bit broader and to branch out of that.
Finally, you’re probably missing potential customers and influencers that are outside what your current sphere of influence is. Whatever that sphere is, the content that is most targeted at your audience is going to have a very tough time making this any bigger than it is. The content that’s more broadly-focused, especially if it does well, is going to help expand this sphere so that you reach more of these people over here with that new expanded sphere.
All the right moves
My recommendations, instead of making your content way narrowly focused, I would try and think broader, and I would think about it in these ways. First off…
- Nail down the actual content goals with your team, your manager, or your client so that everyone agrees, “Hey, we want to do some of this, we want to do some of this, and we’re looking to do a lot of this.” If that’s what we know our content is trying to do, it’s pretty easy to have the conversation about why we shouldn’t just create content here.
- Try and distribute those broad versus narrow versus hyper-specific content efforts. Distribute meaning say, “Hey, we know that we’re going to be producing this amount of content. This is how much of it we want to put effort into to target this segment versus this segment versus this other segment.”
- Establish some cadence, some channels, some of the promotion efforts that are actually going to fit the goal and the target audience, because you’re going to do different kinds of promotion. It’s not just a creation of the content itself and the content strategy, it’s the promotion and the targeting. It’s the channels you use, it’s how often you put it out there, and it’s where you put it on your site. It could be that you have a hyper-specific focused blog and then you have articles that are broader, or your blog is very broad and then you have white papers that are very, very focused on your target audience. Both ways are totally fine.
- Use the right metrics to measure your progress against these goals. If you’re trying to reach a broad new audience, you’re using thing like visits and exposure and engagement. If you’re trying to grow press, amplification, and links, well, you’re looking at links, you’re looking at coverage, you’re looking at mentions. If you’re trying to directly convert customers, you are going to be looking at conversion events and whether that content falls somewhere in the conversion path over the course of time.
You do these things right, I think you’re going to have a much more successful conversation when it comes time to say, “Should we create broad content or specific, hyper-focused content?”
All right, everyone, look forward to your comments and we’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!
from The Moz Blog http://ift.tt/2bHhMIn
via IFTTT
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2mduvGF
via IFTTT
Using the Barnacle SEO Method to Prove Local Community Awareness
Posted by MiriamEllis
‘Barnacle SEO’ was a term first popularized by Will Scott in 2011 to describe the process of attaching your business to existing high-ranking entities (like major directories) and then promoting them as a means of dominating search engine results for desired terms.
Today, we’re going to take that novel concept in a different direction, with the goal of increasing brand awareness for single, multi-location, and enterprise local businesses by latching onto existing influences in any given community. Up ahead: simple tips for interpreting your city, a downloadable community awareness spreadsheet, and real-world examples for your inspiration!
Before we dive in, take a look at these two eye-opening statistics:
“73% of people care about the company, not just the product, when they’re making purchasing decisions.”
– BBMG
“63% of global consumers would buy from a company they consider to be authentic, over and above competitors.”
– Cohn & Wolfe
The Cohn & Wolfe survey of 12,000 participants included these definitions of authenticity consumers care about: the business stands for more than just making money (74%), has a relevant and engaging story (43%), and is well-known in its region or field (63%). The combination of these three statistics should ring bells with any local search marketing expert or department.
Today is the last day you’ll ever worry over what to write about
Independently owned businesses hit roadblocks when they fear they have nothing real to say. Multi-location businesses fret over meaningful differentiation of one location from another. Large enterprises struggle with fostering local authenticity because the distance between the CEO and the clerk behind the checkout counter is sometimes too great, and brand-wide initiatives may result in generic, rather than truly local, messaging.
How to overcome these challenges? The solution lies in realizing that almost any given community is already writing your local story; you just have to discover how to latch onto it.
A significant portion of your blog posts, social outreach, and even paid advertising can be based on the fact that there are local, national, and global influences already firmly established in the minds of your consumers, almost every day of the year. Whether it’s the small-town 4th of July BBQ or the big-city Earth Day celebration, there are events, holidays, weather patterns, long-standing customs, and emerging news items of which your customers are already aware. Your barnacle local awareness marketing simply involves tying your business into pre-existing conditions, proving that you, too, are aware.
Barnacle example #1
To put it another way, you don’t have to tell a customer that summer has arrived. He already sees the sunshine and feels the heat. But if one of the branches of your home improvement franchise is located in a steaming hot, asphalt-topped shopping center, you can:
- Set up a big, friendly, self-serve cooler of iced tea and invite customers to pop in for a free drink.
- Erect a doggy drinking station under a shady overhang and let customers know they can stop by anytime.
- Set up a few quality lawn chairs next to your big display of high-powered fans and invite customers to take a seat and enjoy the breeze.
- Blog, tweet, post, hang up signage, and otherwise share your call for neighbors to come cool off while they’re making their usual shopping rounds.
- Hold a summer contest with a prize of vouchers for the local swim center or other refreshing retreat.
- Sponsor the swim center and earn a sponsorship listing on their website
All of this says you’ve noticed it’s summer, too, that your customers are perspiring, and that you’d like to help. Your outreach establishes your goodwill and an extra reason to visit your business.
Barnacle example #2
Or maybe yours is a large natural foods store enterprise, and you’ve got a location in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Every October, the city hosts the famed week-long Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Your customers are already aware of this event, already talking about it, and making plans surrounding it. Your proofs of local awareness could include:
- Sponsorships
- Donations of money or supplies
- A food booth at the event
- An event photo contest with a nice prize
- In-store specials on picnic items to take to the event
- Fun tips for planning a great picnic meal
- ‘Secret’ insider info on great parking spots near the event grounds
- Staff photos of the fiesta
- Sharing all of the above on your website and social profiles
Your outreach will put this branch of your enterprise right in the middle of a major community happening, establishing your local awareness.
With even a modest application of research and brainstorming, chances are, your community is literally overflowing with inspiration for barnacle local marketing opportunities. For efficiency’s sake, organization will play a key role in planning your schedule of timely outreach. Read on!
4 simple steps to becoming a seaworthy Barnacle Marketer
1. Start with a spreadsheet
There’s nothing quite so organized as a good old spreadsheet, and to save you trouble, we’ve created this one for you, pre-filled in with major holidays and a few influences and fields we think will help you get started. Some holidays are on fixed dates, of course, but you’ll want to edit the dates of others each year.
Here’s an example of what a completed spreadsheet might look like for the month of September for a hypothetical major medical center in the city of Boise, Idaho:
Access your complimentary spreadsheet here.
To make a copy for your own use, simply select “File” from the main menu, then “Make a copy.” You can then add in your own events, change up the formatting, translate it to Swahili, whatever you’d like.
2. Do local, national, and global research
Almost every local Chamber of Commerce website has an events calendar which will detail most significant community happenings. You can also use sites like Eventbrite for further inspiration. And, indeed, there are paid opportunity-finding services like ZipSprout that can do the work for you and hook you up with with relevant sponsorship matches. Remember, you’re looking for well-known happenings that are already part of your customers’ consciousness — events that they are seeing advertised around town, promoted on the web, local TV, and radio.
On the national/global side, major news sites will be your best bet. Some events (like international summits or sports championships) are publicized well in advance. Others will require-up-to the minute awareness of items in the ‘15 minutes news cycle’ that could impact your customers in some relevant way.
Gather links as you do your research and enter them in the spreadsheet.
3. Identify opportunities for participation & promotion
In our hypothetical example, the medical center has identified 2 holidays, 1 national/global influence and 3 local events in September. Their participation in these 6 existing circumstances might be broken down like this:
Image via Pixabay
Labor Day (9/5)
Given that this national holiday honors workers, the medical center has an opportunity for outreach about preventing common work-related injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome, eye strain from computer use, or back problems caused by heavy lifting or improper footwear.
Promotional Opportunities: The doctors could hold a free work-safety seminar for local start-up owners and blog about it. They could also post simple preventative health tips for workers on Facebook and Twitter. They could run an Instagram campaign with photos of optimal vs. risky postures for sitting, standing, and lifting at work, engaging the audience to check whether they are practicing good habits.
Image via Jeremy Noble
Local Labor Day Picnic (9/5)
Local traditions like this are a natural opportunity for sponsorships. New to sponsorships for local businesses? This excellent guide will give you a crash course. The medical center could simply help provide funds for the seating, food, and entertainment in exchange for being listed as a sponsor on promotional materials, or they could take a more active role. They could set up a booth at the picnic, offering refreshments high in electrolytes to rehydrate picnic-goers, or maybe free 5-minute therapeutic foot massages, or UV-protective sunscreen.
Promotional Opportunities: To truly ‘barnacle’ onto this event, the medical center should promote both it and their participation in it on their website and social profiles. Posts, tweets, and images to the tune of “Treat tired feet to a free massage by a licensed practitioner at the Labor Day Picnic, courtesy Green of Tree Medical Center,” with links to the event website would all be good. Promote the event, promote yourself.
Image via Clemens v. Vogelsang
Art in the Park (9/9–9/11)
Billed as one of the premiere art events in the Northwest, this annual Boise exhibit is another sponsorship no-brainer. These days, most event committees clearly post calls for sponsorship on their websites, and the really savvy ones detail exactly what sponsors can expect in return in terms of brand promotion including signage, blog posts, and social mentions. So, that’s one option. Another is to barnacle onto the idea that art serves many purposes in the human community and is, in fact, used as a form of therapy. If the medical center is full-service, there’s a clear opportunity to connect health and art.
Promotional Opportunities: If the medical center is an event sponsor, they could promote the event on the clinic’s website, and tie the theme into the practice of art therapy. This would be an excellent month to raise awareness of the center’s group art therapy sessions, or to offer a series of social media tips about the ways in which many art forms are believed to have a positive impact on everything from depression to stroke recovery. Or, perhaps some of the doctors’ or patients’ artwork will be featured in the event. What a great chance for some Pinterest marketing and an invitation to come see more of this work hanging in the medical center’s reception area!
Image via bark
First Day of Fall (9/22)
At first glance, many businesses may struggle to see how they can tie in with community awareness of leaves changing color or pumpkins ripening, but it just takes a little ideation. The medical center might launch a Healthier Boise campaign, with free flu shots, reminders to get asthma inhaler prescriptions refilled against the coming onslaught of woodstove smoke, and healthy recipes for using all those butternut squashes and greens in the market for optimum vitamin intake.
Promotional Opportunities: The campaign can be promoted on all of the medical center’s social profiles, as well as on the homepage of the company website, supported by additional pages or posts of useful content. This would be a smart time to interview some of the clinic’s doctors on general preventative medicine tips to strengthen the community for the coming cold season.
Image via Susumu Komatsu
Walk to End Alzheimer’s (9/17)
A renowned event like this offers remarkable, diverse opportunities for advocacy, sponsorships, and donations. Doubtless, numerous staff members will be participating in the walk and the medical center can tell the story of this while also tying this into ongoing research and services relating to Alzheimer’s at their facility.
Promotional Opportunities: Event booths, individual sponsorships, staff photos, patient photos, fundraising goals, and education can all be socially promoted. Participation in a large event like this deserves top billing on the website homepage, too, backed up with blog posts.
Image via Pixabay
Global Obesity Summit Los Angeles (9/26 - 9/28)
Most industries have summits, conferences, and events that will be attended by staff members and, often, consumers as well. Given how often America’s obesity epidemic is mentioned in mainstream media, the medical center can see in this important global event an opportunity for education and outreach on a very current topic. Sponsorship opportunities are easily apparent. Or, if one or more of the doctors will present at the summit or even just attend, their research and discoveries can then be shared with the city of Boise.
Promotional Opportunities: Staff participants can be interviewed for the blog, offering new suggestions for maintaining a healthy weight based on summit presentations. If the medical center offers exercise classes or dietary counseling, here’s a perfect opportunity to reach out socially with a free first session offer to the community. Could be a fun time to experiment with Snapchat. Be as generous as possible in sharing tips that could improve patients’ lives.
Even at a glance, it’s easy to see that a local business can quickly fill every calendar month of the year with community outreach and promotion of the company’s involvement. Don’t forget that to be a good barnacle, you’ve got to promote awareness of community happenings as well as promoting your own participation in them. Put up in-store flyers and posters, tweet, share, and chat!
I’d further recommend tracking the outcomes of each campaign so that you learn, over the course of the next couple of years, which events and which forms of participation resonate most with a given community and result in the greatest ROI for the business.
My question for our readers: Which forms of tracking do you use to measure success from these types of activities? Please, share your expertise to benefit the community!
4. Designate a Local Expert at each business location
Hopefully the above three steps will already have the wheels turning about how your brand can discover and participate in the influences your potential consumers are already aware of, but doubtless, this questions arises:
“Who’s going to do all of this work?”
The answer is, you’re going to need to give an existing employee or a new hire the nifty title of ‘Local Expert.’ If you’re the owner and your business is very small, the Local Expert may have to be you until you grow the company a bit more, but for most small-to-large local businesses, local marketing is vital enough to be a genuine job.
Multi-location companies and large enterprises should expect to appoint a Local Expert for each branch, or at least for each city in which the business operates. In the interview process, here are 5 things you want to look for in an existing or new staff member that should spell success:
- Has lived in the target city for some years. A born-and-bred local would be my ideal, because she may be aware of cherished history and customs beyond the ken of newcomers, but let’s stipulate that the Local Expert has lived in the region for at least a couple of years.
- Has above-average communication skills, both in person and on the web. Your expert will not only be socially promoting your company’s participation in events (necessitating interaction with the community), they will also likely be on the phone with event holders and attending some events in person. Be sure you feel confident about this person representing your business and that they have the real-world social skills necessary to foster excellent interactions.
- They must know or be willing to learn the basics of Local SEO. Even if this staff member has nothing to do with optimizing your website or managing your citations, they must understand that the core goal of all of their work will be increasing the local visibility of your brand. They need to understand how local search works to comprehend why this is such a big deal.
- They must know or be willing to learn local/social media marketing. If the candidate for the job can reel off the things they’re already doing on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Periscope, smartphone apps, and their personal blog, you’ve got a winner on your hands. Better still if they tend to be ahead of the social technology curve and are able to identify trends in the popularity of various platforms that could spell out innovative opportunities for your local marketing.
- They should bring a sense of excitement and fun to the work. Based on the barnacle principle, your Local Expert should be energized by the task of promoting both his city and his workplace, enriching the community with useful information. This is one job in which enthusiasm will really shine through in the final product.
Would some real-world inspiration really get you going?
I always find it easier to conceptualize tasks when I take a look at what others have done. If that goes for you, too, here are some real-world examples of local awareness proofs.
- Here’s an inspiring story about a NYC-based organization called New Women New Yorkers which helps immigrant women gain access to resources that will make their lives safer, more profitable, and more interesting in their new country. A local Lebanese restaurant called Manousheh answered the organization’s call for sponsorships and donations for an event, and was thanked on an events page and mentioned on events sites like this one. To close the barnacle loop, all the restaurant needs to do is start a page on their own site mentioning that they support this organization and that they participated in an event. It would be nice, too, if the organization would make sponsor logos link to their websites. Everybody is off to a good start here and just needs to go one step further.
- 2016 marked the 41st anniversary of a Santa Fe event called Pancakes on The Plaza. Local bank First National of Santa Fe comes out as a winner with a featured logo on this sponsors page and with a barnacle shout out on their own website, promoting both their participation and the event, plus proud mentions on their Facebook page. The deal is further sweetened by blog mentions like this one, this one, this one… and the list goes on!
- And here’s a delightful example of just how grateful a really motivated business can be to its sponsors. In this case, the Prince Edward Island Potato Board is getting all kinds of Twitter love from a local restaurant and live theater venue:
And PEI Potato barnacles on like pros, holding a contest for tickets to a summer musical performance at the sponsored theater:
If restaurants, banks, & potato growers can do it, so can you!
Your community is already alive to the influences surrounding it: businesses, events, organizations, seasonal traditions, and relevant news. You don’t have to write a new story from scratch; you just need to discover where you fit into the existing storyline. Generosity, creativity, and a genuine desire to contribute to community well-being are what it takes to become a visible player in local life.
Has your business been using the barnacle method all along to prove local awareness? Our Moz community would benefit from your inspirational stories. Please share them in the comments!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!
from The Moz Blog http://ift.tt/2c2Idq3
via IFTTT
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2mTjVSu
via IFTTT
Friday, March 17, 2017
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Friday, January 20, 2017
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Monday, January 2, 2017
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)