In this entry, I talk about the new Facebook Places feature and how your local business can take advantage of it
As a local business owner, you know that “word of mouth” is easily the most effective and important way to market your business. Indeed, especially when it comes to local business, word of mouth is a very common and crucial means of attracting customers to your door.
Your prospective customers will look to their friends and acquaintances to find and learn more about your business.
New Facebook Places Feature!
Just yesterday, Facebook released a new feature called Facebook Places.
This feature allows users to share their locations as well as see where there friends are. It uses a “check-in” feature which allows users to share where they are and find other nearby users who have checked in. It also allows users to post comments about particular places and even tag other friends at a location.
Podcast Coming Up
I’ve had a simple question in my head lately, “I want to reach more people and more effectively. What can I do?”
The first thing that came to my mind was to just try another medium, other than blogging.
Naturally, then, the idea of making a podcast immediately jumped as a possibility.
However, I definitely had my doubts. Like, how do I make a podcast? What kind of resources and equipment do I need? What value could I bring to the listener? Would anyone actually listen? Is my voice good enough?It
Get Your Business On the Map
Google’s been undergoing a lot of developments lately in order to appeal to local business owners.
One important area of change has been with Google Maps.
Obviously, as a local business owner, Google Maps is very relevant and important to your business. When potential customers are looking for a business near them online, they typically use map sites like Google Maps.
On August 14th, I will be hosting and presenting a webinar on local internet marketing strategies and tools.
I decided to create this webinar to give a good overview of all the tools and resources out there that you can use for your local business.
The problem with learning about internet marketing in general, especially with local internet marketing, is that there are so many different strategies and methods out there.
Some methods are more effective than others but only on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, some techniques are more appropriate at different times and for different customers and clients.
Yeah I know.
What can a shirtless man sporting men’s deodorant teach you about marketing your business?
Well, a lot of things actually. This advertising campaign is easily one of the most popular advertising campaigns to come along in the last few years. Not only did it receive a lot of attention from viewers but it also sparked a great deal of positive reaction too.
I know you are likely thinking…do I really need another window decal to put on my business?
Indeed, just when you thought that you had all the window decals you need, along comes Facebook with yet another one.
Apparently, Facebook is sending special window decals to certain local businesses that have text-to-like SMS instructions on them. The picture below demonstrates what it looks like
Look out Foursquare and Google Latitude! Facebook is now getting into the location-based social networking sphere.
Ad Age reported that Facebook is preparing to launch a new feature that will allow any Facebook users to broadcast their current location along with status updates. This allows marketers to further target individuals with even more relevant location-relevant ads.
In case you haven’t heard, Google has renamed its local business site from Local Business Center to Google Places. This isn’t just a name change either. Google’s brought some more features to the Places pages to further help local businesses market themselves. For instance, you can now specify an are that you can service on Google Maps so that customers can know if they fall within your service area. You can also post real-time updates (just like Twitter) to your Places page which can help you promote specials, discounts, etc. It appears that Google is bringing these changes as a means to revamp and retool its local business initiatives.
You may or may not have heard of a little location-based social networking site called Foursquare.
For those of you who have heard of it, you may also know that it has one of the fastest growing user bases of all the social networks. In fact, though it is still a very new service, it is already closing in on 1 million users!
Moreover, because of it’s sudden rise in popularity and it’s value as an effective local internet marketing platform, Yahoo had offered as much as $125 million to buy Foursquare!
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