Dominate Your Local Market!

Here are a few HubPages hubs with useful information on marketing via social networks. These articles cover Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Warning: Don’t Ignore These 5 Rules of Twitter Marketing!

8 Things Every Small Business Should Know About Social Media

How To Get Followers On Twitter

Twitter: 30 Simple Ways To Supercharge Your Effectiveness On Twitter!

Facebook Groups – An Absolute Must for Web 2.0 Marketing

How To Create a Facebook Application

5 Ways to Use LinkedIn To Drive Traffic to Your Website, Blog or HubPages

Top Ten Tips For Getting the Most From LinkedIn

“Static websites are dead – or at least on life support. If you want to market online today, your visitors expect more than boring, static, unchanging content and you should, too.”

That’s what I said in a post the other day. And it prompted a question from one of my readers who asked, “Do you mean that a static website has NO value at all?” Hmmm, good question.

What I really meant was that no one should be building new static websites in today’s Web 2.0 world. And businesses that are using static websites should now be taking a look at upgrading.

It’s simply a case of giving the visitors what they want. And what they want are fresh, updated content, audio, video, interactive elements, etc. And an old tenet of marketing is “Find out what they want and give it to them.” So let’s get back to my reader’s question.

Does a static website have NO value at all? If you’ve been following my posts, you’ve observed that I’ve said several times that ANY website is better than NO website. It your website (static or dynamic) gives visitors the essential information on your business, it is worth having.

So, what’s the problem?

Google. Yes, Google. Google is both the problem and the opportunity. If you have a website that hasn’t been updated since 2002, you may hold your own in a small market where competition is limited… for a while.

But many of you may have noticed that when you search for a local product or service, even using the city in the search, you often get a bunch of out-of-town results, many of whom rank higher than local businesses for that search phrase.

That is most likely because Google (or Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine) is indexing changes and updates to those sites and not to the one that has been unchanged for the past few years, despite the fact that is meets the location criteria better.

But there’s the opportunity. Upgrade your online marketing and capture the top positions for your keywords and it will bring you more customers and more income. It’s that simple.

Again the question – are static websites dead?

If not dead they are on life support as i previously mentioned. And it’s time to call in the family because the monitor is about to “flat line”.

The whole purpose for a business to have a website is to bring in new customers and encourage old customers to visit and buy. And the best way to do that is by using a direct response approach to your marketing.

No matter what your business is selling, it can sell more of it using direct response marketing. And online is the ideal place for that.

Call Bob at Orange Cat (859-544-9005) for a free initial consultation and find out how you can bring in more customers and more business.

“Are you having enough SALES CONVERSATIONS? If you don’t have all the business or clients that you want, maybe you simply need to have more sales conversations. That was a challenge I laid down to my Marketing Mastermind group last month, and one couple jumped to action with IMMEDIATE results.”

That bit of advice came to me from Bernadette Doyle of ClientMagnets.com.

Although Bernadette was talking about direct face-to-face selling of services, I couldn’t help but think how it applies to what we do. When a local business posts an update to their blog, comments on Facebook or Twitter or sends an email update to their list, they are having a “sales conversation” with their market even if they aren’t overtly selling.

That’s because all of us like to do business with those we know, like and trust. The process of relationship building is helped along each time we do one of those things.

But to work really well, these things have to be done consistently. Tony Robbins puts it this way: “It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.” It can shape our lives and it can shape our businesses.

One of the great things about marketing online is that your target audience needs to do something to respond to your message – if you are doing it right. The act of taking action means they will most likely pay closer attention to your message than they will using passive media.

So if you’re not as busy as you’d like to be, or if you’re not making as many sales as you’d like, think about what you can do to have more sales conversions, either face-to-face or using your online marketing strategy.

Start taking advantage of this strategy today and you’ll see results in no time.

There’s a Memorial Day Sale on the three best-selling video tutorial sets at HowDoIDoThatVideo.com. 20% off makes this the best price ever on these complete tutorial series. But the sale only runs until 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, May 25, 2009 so if you want to jump on this, click here to go to the Sale post now.

Click to visit ShortSaleCertified.com

A short time ago one of my clients, ShortSaleCertified.com in Michigan, requested that we place a small video testimonial in the sidebar of his WordPress template. We built a video from two video clips and an audio file with a slide and set it in place using the WordPress Video Widget.

It worked great, but the client wanted it to autostart on opening the page and here needed to be a poster image inserted when the video wasn’t playing. After fooling around with the coding of the plugin, we got the video to autostart, but there was a problem. Because the plugin appears on every page of the site, the video would autostart every time someone went to a new page – a surefire “visitor annoyance feature”.

How did we solve it? By inserting some conditional code into the plugin, we were able to have it autostart only on the home page and not on any others. Have a look at the website and try it out.

The point of all this is that WordPress is a very customizable Content Management System (CMS). We have never had a customer request that we couldn’t fulfill with a little custom PHP coding – at least to date.

Don’t let anyone sell you on the idea that a static website is a “set it and forget it” marketing plan. Do that and you’ll be the one who is forgotten. WordPress gives you Web 2.0 interactivity and a very flexible framework to build on. Static websites are dead – or at least on life support. If you want to market online today, your visitors expect more than boring, static, unchanging content and you should, too.

Click image to enlarge

This morning, I posted a “tweet” on Twitter announcing the launch of Orange Cat’s Facebook Fan Page (not-so-subtle-plug: become an OrangeCat fan). I used a trackable short URL so I could see the results.

Within 12 minutes, there were 11 hits on that brand new link. The link was only used on Twitter so every one of those 11 hits came from that tweet. That’s almost one per minute. I don’t hold any illusions that that pace will keep up for very long, but I’m still impressed with the power of Twitter to generate traffic.

That result is made more impressive by the fact that I only have 36 followers on Twitter at this time. Now is the time to get your account on Twitter while you still have a decent chance at getting the username you want.

In a recent post, we published a Howcast video on How to use Twitter, so you can started on the right foot.

And once you get your Twitter username, follow me and I’ll return the favor. We can get our own little network started and expand it out. Now, get going!

Another instant updating service that local businesses can use to stay in touch with customers is Twitter. Short messages (“tweets”) of 140 characters or less and a URL can be posted. Twitter has millions of users. Here’s a Howcast video to show you how to use Twitter.

So… IS a bad website better than no website? That depends on what makes it bad! If it just looks bad, but is functional, easy to navigate and communicates your business’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP), it’s probably doing you some good despite it’s unattractiveness. And it can probably be prettied-up fairly easily.

But if it’s bad because it is hard to navigate, is too confusing because of information overload, or lacks focus, the problems are more deep-rooted and it may be doing you more harm than good. NOTE – think lipstick and swine.

A very famous marketing expert once said “Anything worth doing is worth doing half-***ed.” What he meant was that doing something is always better than doing nothing.

Especially when the market is down. People who are already a little skittish about spending their hard-earned dollars certainly won’t give their money to a business that is running scared and looks ready to throw in the towel.

And a bad website – or more to the point, a bad marketing plan – can make you look like you’re down to the last card in your deck – not a picture that instills confidence.

Now might be a good time to have a look at your online marketing efforts and if you find them wanting, do something about it. If you, like so many other businesses, have found that you need to tighten up on your budget, a good online marketing program could be your salvation…

More results for less money.

Do you have a clear, concise website in place? Do you have an email marketing program up and running? What’s stopping you?

Have a look at this web page. Is it clear? Is it concise? Can you tell what the USP is?

So many times I hear from small business owners that they’d like to be on top of their online marketing, but they don’t have the time or the technical know-how.

But you don’t need either to succeed in online marketing on a local, regional or national basis. You don’t print your own newspaper to run your ads, do you? Well, you don’t have to publish your own website or blog either.

Talk to your online marketing professional today – note that I didn’t say “web designer” – and get started making your website work for you.

A recent study revealed that $1 spent on email marketing brings in over $50 on average. It works especially well in local markets. That’s a powerful Return on Investment! Get your’s today.

Call your online marketing professionals at 859-544-9005 for even more ideas on how you can grow your business with WordPress and email marketing.

How can you use WordPress and email to boost your business? Here’s an example from the new case studies section of OrangeCat.com. Check it out – we might have just the answer for your business as well.

“My most successful client has been a moderate-sized family restaurant.

“He never had a site and didn’t want one but was intrigued with the autoresponder idea for staying in contact with his customers. So we set up a simple blog and an email marketing program.

“A few months after implementing the autoresponder, his email list has been built up to over 3,000 people.

“He has a seating capacity in his restaurant of 120.

“We have built a great rapport with his list by sharing recipes, food hygiene tips, videos of new staff and chef, funny restaurant stories, etc. This is also where the blog came in handy.

“Previously, his biggest complaint was that his restaurant was extremely quiet from Monday to Wednesday.

“We send out special deals to the list – normally once a week to half the list – meaning that an offer is only sent to each person on the list twice a month and something of value or something funny twice a month, etc. – that way the list is not inundated with constant offers but the restaurant still gets an offer out every week to help fill tables.

“We have managed to make his restaurant very busy on his previously quiet nights.”

This is the power of a well-managed mailing list attached to a blog or website. Offering a special on slower days or nights allows the customer to feel there is value in coming in more often. And the restaurant turns empty tables into cash.

So what about delis and sandwich shops?

Use WordPress and an email marketing strategy to keep customers informed of daily lunch and dinner specials. Some smart operators have use a fax broadcast for this in the past, but now a well-timed email, text or Twitter update can accomplish much more for less.

Establish a birthday or anniversary club and send a special offer during the customers birth month. The big guys do it. Why not you?

A recent study revealed that $1 spent on email marketing brings in over $50 on average. It works especially well in local markets. Get your’s today.

Call us at 859-544-9005 for even more ideas on how you can grow your business with WordPress and email marketing.

OrangeCat.com went WordPress today.

Why? Because WordPress is simply the best way to get quick and sure ranking with Google and other search engines – IF your WordPress software is set up correctly. Even if it’s not, it is still head and shoulders above the competition when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). So we re-launched OrangeCat.com using WordPress.

And we can enhance the SEO capabilities of WordPress to work even better.

That’s why we changed OrangeCat.com to Wordpress, which we’ve been using successfully on our many other websites, including this one, YourKentuckyHome.com, my personal blog, HowDoIDoThatVideos.com, SuperFruitsGTFiGo.com and several client sites, among them KyLandSales.com, StarHomeUSA.com and the StopMichiganForeclosure.com blog.

There are many more as well and… every time we build another one, we are pleasantly surprised by the resulting SEO results.

We’ve developed our own custom installation of WordPress that gives you everything you need to succeed. Automated Google sitemap building, custom SEO fields, custom layouts, built-in automated email marketing, and much more

WordPress can be tailored to fit your business’s needs and we know how to do it. Give Bob a call today at 859-544-9005 to get started.