January 2011 Newsletter
Google News
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. ~W. Edwards Deming
At the end of December Google made yet another profound change to its search engine. This is evidence of the rapidity that takes place in the online world and technology in general. It is hard to adapt to this rapidly changing environment. A good reason to have a company on your side that is working to keep up with this and bring you the latest internet marketing techniques.
So what changed? Well Google has been experimenting with local search algorithms for a few months but, new policy changes carry with it the good, the bad, and ugly (I love those spaghetti westerns)
The Good – Local search has now moved to a more social, recommendation, based platform. This is a great opportunity to improve your standing with ALL the social media sites and search engines. Since Google is now focused to Citations, reviews and recommendations, the playing field is now open to local companies that know this, instead of the large directories like yellow pages. As a matter of fact directories like the yellow pages are no longer used by Google as verification of a business. Instead Google now uses 6-10 other authority sites like Yelp, Local.com, Foursquare, Digg, and others. Creating and managing a reputation online is now more important than ever since Google is trying to determine the MOST POPULAR business in the local market according to CUSTOMERS. Why is Google doing this? One word FACEBOOK.
The Bad – The bad news is many businesses don’t know about this change or the fact that, reputation, customer comments, social media, and testimonies are now the new currency for local search. Not to down play a website, but backlinks and SEO are lower factors going forward since Google is moving away from areas that can be manipulated, to areas that are directly out of a business or SEO Company’s control. This shift now makes it harder for traditional SEO to work in a local market.
The Ugly – According to Google’s policy changes, if a business does attempt to manipulate this it will send up red flags and you may find your business in the sandbox. Basically banned from Google search results for at least 6 months if not permanently. Even if you inadvertently violate the parameters set up by Google you can find yourself at the bottom of the heap in search results. For example attempting to stuff positive comments in Google places, (a tactic used by some reputation management companies) will get you tagged and flagged. This is because Google knows the IP addresses used for such comments and the servers they come from. Google is even looking at the keywords used in the comments to see if any patterns emerge that SUGGEST manipulation. What Google wants is a natural flow of genuine comments from your customers, not five guys in India adding comments to your recommendation tags. Google is even watching which categories you use to see if they match your website offerings. Bottom line; don’t try to manipulate Google they are getting very SERIOUS about this. To get a top ten listing in places now requires a pre planned set up, in advance of actually submitting to places itself. If you simple update your places and throw some positive comments in it from your computer, you will find it does nothing for your local rankings.
Bottom line is, to do this correctly now takes some level of expertise if you want to get listed correctly in the NEW local search results.
IM4B Launches 
Im4b has, after over 1 year of research, launched into Mobile marketing, we now offer a complete Mobile Success System, designed to increase any business results. This includes all components for a mobile marketing campaign that is engineered to work for your specific business with over 49 options and 14 main steps to consider. Here are some of the components of our Mobile Success System.
- A Truly Mobile Website – one that will work on ALL mobile devices see www.im4b.mobi
- A Mobile Social Venue Page – LBSM (Location based social media)
- A strategy and System building a Mobile list & text messaging (SMS)
- A Strategy and System for collecting & posting Happy Customer Reviews
- Some SEO magic for both your PC and Mobile websites
You might be asking yourself is mobile is really needed for you business. Well here are some things to consider:
Do any of your customers have a mobile phone? Maybe that sounds like a silly question but less than five years ago it was not Fact is there are more mobile phones over 5 billion than PC users 1.5 billion. The average PC user spends 2.4 hours per day in front of a PC; the average mobile user has their phone within 3 ft of them 24/7. E-mail campaigns get an average of less than 10% open rates. Mobile phones have an open rate of 95%. A mobile offer is 7.5 TIMES more likely to result in a purchase than a website offer. One mobile campaign can get more results in 30 minutes than a year of website search traffic. Mobile texts are growing at 5000% per year. If you want to know more about mobile visit our FREE report put out by Morgan Stanley at (insert link to our site)
IM4B adds Social media certification to its list of accreditations. In a move to improve the market place and raise the standards IM4B has added Social Media Consulting Accreditation. IM4B is a proud member of the Local Internet Marketing Association (LIMA) an organization that promotes high standards in SEO and other service to local business. Being a member shows our commitment to improving the industry and conducting business in an honest, professional manner.
Where no man has gone before – these are the words from one of my favorite TV shows and movie series Star Trek. I often see our adventures in internet marketing as those of this very popular series.
Many of our adventures lead us to challenges that are a fight, pitting our innovativeness, and ingenuity against today’s business problems. It is not always easy and we often find ourselves thinking “out of the box”. Let’s look at some examples.
Not us -How can mobile apply to a manufacturing company that works through distributors and not directly with the public? On the surface it would seem that mobile marketing has no relevance to this type of business. However after a few questions we have found out that the company attends several large industry events each year that are critical to its exposure in the market place. A mobile campaign is perfect for them, having a text EVENT to XXXXX allows us to do several things prior to the show, during the show, and after the show. Prior to the show special discounts and offers encourage prospects to attend the show. During the show they can offer immediate show specials if the prospect stops by the booth, and they can generate a list of new prospects by displaying a QR code or text to message to capture new prospects. After the show, they have a fast and very responsive way to follow up and thank those for attending, offer additional support, and encourage migration to social media and the website. Know any manufacturing companies have them contact us: wkline@im4b.com
The SERVICES industry problem-. Many personal service industry providers have common problems. For example, dentists, chiropractors, beauticians, auto repair, dermatologists, lawyers, all share one common issue that affects their bottom line, Appointment cancelations. They can eat up a considerable amount of annual revenue. Since they all have time limits, an idle hour sitting around since someone cancelled an appointment is counterproductive and often not recoverable. Mobile marketing can be a great way to reduce this negative impact. Setting up a VIP mobile text group a service provider now has the option to send out a SMS message to the group offering a discount to fill the cancelation. This is a win -win situation, the service provider recovers some revenue the group member gets a discount. I know if my service providers offered this I might be inclined to avail myself of their services more often.
My Cook is sick- if you run a business you know how frustrating it can be when an employee is out sick, especially if it is critical to your businesses operation. In the past the owner or a secretary or both would now have to get on the phone and make calls to find a replacement. Mobile to the rescue, now you can text the employee group to see if anyone can cover for the sick employee. The message is fast, goes to your employee’s mobile phones and can be responded to in seconds. No more hours making calls to answering machines leaving a message hoping someone will respond.
These are just a few examples of how mobile can help a business, I am sure we will discover new worlds, new applications, as we go where no man has gone before.
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