ASBA

910 West recently joined ASBA (Arizona Small Business Alliance) and are currently participating in their July membership drive. We are looking for businesses who want to grow their business by joining a very powerful and active support network. Learn more about the benefits in our Post “Get Support for Your Local Business from ASBA (and a Great Deal!).” If you are looking for funding for your business or thinking about joining ASBA we’ve got a great deal for you:

• Join ASBA this week (click here to join, and when you get to the last page, use my special promo code jasmine711 to join for only $100!) and receive 2 FREE tickets (a $70 value) to the August 10 Meet the Banks that are Lending seminar being held here at ASBA from 1 to 2:30 p.m. The non-member registration price is $35 and the member price is $15. Save yourself the extra $20 and put it towards your membership (that’s 1/5 of the cost). Pair that with their amazing Staples discount program and the membership pays for itself.

Gilbert Chamber

There are a couple of cool events this week and later this month at the Gilbert Chamber.

• It is kind of short notice but a fun way to support the Gilbert 9/11 Memorial. Networking for a Cause presents Casino Night to raise funds to benefit the 9/11 Memorial being constructed here in Gilbert. The event is Thursday, August 4 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the House of Brews Neighborhood Sports Grill, 825 S Cooper Road (on the Southeast corner of Cooper and Warner Roads). Come meet your Gilbert firefighters, try your luck at Blackjack, and win raffle prizes, including an Apple iPad! Learn more about the event or register to attend»
• Referral Strategies: Building Your Power Team is a don’t miss event and since it’s not for two weeks you have plenty of time to clear your calendar. Referral strategist, Victoria Trafton,provides training and tools to help business professionals gain financial success through relationship-based referral marketing. Jasmine has taken several of Victoria’s courses and they have completely changed how we approach networking and referrals. In fact, 910 West saw results immediately upon adopting Victoria’s techniques. The workshop is Wednesday, August 17 from 7:30 to 10 a.m. at the Val Vista Lakes event facility located on Val Vista Drive, just south of Baseline. Get details or register to attend»

MidFirst Mixer

The MidFirst San Tan branch is hosting a Business Mixer Thursday, August 4 starting at 5 p.m. If you are not banking with MidFirst you should be (we just moved our business accounts and are so happy—bye, bye fees). Take this opportunity to meet the staff and some local businesses. We will be there so hope to see you too! The address is 2849 S Market Street, Gilbert, AZ 85296. (It is just off the 202 near the San Tan Village mall.)

ASBA is all about supporting local and small businesses in Arizona so the group is a natural fit for us. I have also agreed to be a part of their effort to help the small businesses of our area become more successful.  During the month of July, I have committed to share the benefits of ASBA membership with you and to personally invite you to join me as an ASBA Member.

Joining is easy!  Click here to join, and when you get to the last page, use my special promo code jasmine711 to join for only $100! That’s an $85 savings.

ASBA is the only and oldest statewide association dedicated to serving our small businesses. The addition of their local public policy commitment will make ASBA a major force in Arizona business and policy decisions. With over 97% of the businesses in our region being classified as small business, having a group advocate for our particular needs is long overdue.

Here are just three of the great reasons to join ASBA today:

• Save up to 79% with the new Staples Advantage program plus an additional 10% off everything Staples sells. No other group in Arizona offers this deep of a discount. More exclusive discounts can be found at www.asba.com/discounts. This discount is no joke, I was able to save $50 on a new file cabinet for my office and got free delivery! One medium size business supply purchase will pay for your membership.
• More opportunities to do business with thousands of other businesses, like the all new online member discounts program. I’ll also be actively networking at ASBA events and would love to have you join me so I can spread the word about your business!
• ASBA is the ONLY statewide organization dedicated to watching out for small business at local, state and federal levels.

I’m sending you this e-mail because I need your help. In order to be effective we need to combine our efforts. It’s time to band together and make a difference. Thank you for helping me with this exciting campaign!  Don’t forget, you can join today by clicking here and entering my special promo code jasmine711 to save $85 and join for only $100.

Sincerely,
Jasmine and the 910 West Team

Claim Your Oscar

Another great newsletter from Michael Katz, Blue Penguin Development, about why giving away information is not a bad marketing tactic. A client recently asked me this very question about providing how-to steps on his website. We ended up at pretty much the same conclusion—if we provided the basic steps and even a video demo they would still need to visit the store to buy the products and get the specific amounts to use in their home.

Do not think of sharing information as loss because it is not at all. Rather it is a gain—a way to show prospects and clients what it is you do and why they need a professional to help. Though the basics steps are the same, each individual’s situation is different and they still need you to customize the basic information to their unique differences.

Using a Social FAQ to Kick Start Content Marketing

A detailed example of how an amusement park is using online marketing (website, Facebook and Twitter) to answer visitors’ questions. I especially like that fact that they have an individual page for each ride on their site with a video and supporting content. It makes each ride its own mini-page and let’s you know exactly what to expect. This is definitely an out-of-box take on the website structure. And it has got me thinking about a few client projects, hmm….

Be sure to download the materials referenced in the article, to follow along. If you have questions, post them to the comments sections below and we’ll answer them!

• Keyword Research Spreadsheet
• Content Distribution Tree (shows how to post to multiple social media sites with one upload)

Look and Feel

The most obvious change is to the look of the pages—they received the same visual makeover that was rolled out to personal profiles a while back.

Overall the look is much neater, with the tabs moving to left under the logo area. We really like this because it frames that logo area much better especially if you have a lot of white space in your logo.

The image ribbon is also a nice touch giving you some very prominent real estate to display your product. You can also add links to the description text (use the http:// protocol to start and it we will be clickable). By default the ribbon shows the five newest items in a random order (try reloading the page it will change). You can opt to not have an image show in the ribbon by clicking the “x” when you hover over it.

Under the Hood

Though less noticeable, there are behind the scenes changes are seriously cool. The biggest change is that you now choose to comment either as your personal profile or the page. This is great for companies like us who help our clients manage their Facebook accounts but want to remain invisible. It is also a plus for anyone who wants to keep their personal and professional lives as separate as possible.

The wall no longer shows posts chronologically but rather using a “relevance” determined by Facebook. It is a little strange but worth mentioning.

You can also choose to receive notices (either via email or SMS) when someone interacts with the page. It makes interacting with your visitors so much easier for the few who don’t spend hours a day on Facebook.

This last one is the real biggie though it won’t mean much to anyone who is not a techie. Facebook is getting rid of the FBML App on March 11. FBML is Facebook’s flavor of HTML, the language used to create webpages. While not difficult to use, it did require some tech knowledge that many would not want to mess with. FBML is being replaced with the supposedly easier to use iFrames. Any FBML App installed before the cut off will continue to function so if this is concern then it makes sense to install it just in case. The tool we use, the Hubze Fan Page Engine, has already been upgraded to create iFrame pages so you might want to check it out as an alternative.

That is the new Facebook Business Page in a nutshell. For more information, check out the Facebook Pages Manual or visit the notes page that Facebook set up to share the details.

We will save the in-depth for another day. Instead, today’s article is meant as a cautionary tale of what not to do. In the past weeks, several large companies have been busted by Google for black hat (no nos in other words) link building practices. What did they do wrong? Paying for links on irrelevant sites and offering discounts for links. Check out the two articles for more.

• The Dirty Little Secrets of Search
• Google Penalizes Overstock for Search Tactics

Photo credit goes to Michael Hayslip Photography. Thank you!

Making Local Reviews Part of the Content Strategy

Excellent case study on how one Brooklyn optometrist is kicking ass with review on Yelp. I have just started working with a local optometrist and think this might be a good strategy for him. We have been focusing on improving his website but it is going to take a while to get it where we need it be. Pumping up his Yelp profile might be a great intermediary step.

Using Surveys to Automatically Create Reviews and Referrals

This article taps into things that we have been working on in our marketing—how to get more referrals and launching a customer satisfaction survey. Almost as long as 910 West has been in business, we have been planning to create an after the sale survey to ask customers how we did. We have been dragging my feet on it because we weren’t sure what to ask. This article has given us a great idea and we love the fact that it starts off with one question. Who wouldn’t be willing to take a one-question survey? Looks like we might actually have to stop thinking about the satisfaction survey and actually do it!

Photo credits goes to fengergold on Flickr Creative Commons. Thank you!

Using Skype for Content and Collaboration

We have been reading a lot about Skype as a collaboration and marketing tool and this article provides some solid examples and how-tos. An idea that we are playing with is using Skype to conduct and record vide interview for our blog. Related businesses (who are not your competition) are the perfect candidates. They get free publicity and you get someone else’s voice on your blog besides your own.

The Power of the Press Release in Small Businesses

Press releases are an often overlooked tool for small businesses. Don’t think that they are just for corporations with an entire PR staff. Releases are excellent tools for building backlinks (especially when us a distribution service like PR Web). Even if you take a less formal route, they are a great way to spread the word about your business.

1. Be yourself. You want your content to be interesting, entertaining and maybe even funny. Try to relax and have fun with it. Tell a story or joke or both to get the readers warmed up.
2. Chose one topic per article and stick to it. Don’t try to cram too much into a post. 300 to 500 words is a perfect length—long enough to be informative but not so long that the reader gets tires and gives up. If a post starts to run long, then make it a series. You get more posts and give readers a reason to come back later.
3. On the topics, of well topics, be smart when choosing what you write about. Start with your keyword research for inspiration. If you need help finding a topic, try the WordTracker Keyword Question Tool. It shows you the questions (phrases) searched using your keyword.
4. Use your keyword (or phrase) in your headline and at least three times in the body text for the best SEO.

Believe it or not, blogging really is that easy. What are you waiting for?

Bonus: Download the Blog Post Worksheet to use as a handy checklist for planning your posts.