Do You Want To Build A THRIVING Facebook Fan Page for Your Business?

Check out our latest content series we are launching THIS Friday….

Sponsored By:

Most business owners and managers understand the need to be on Facebook… the bigger question is- how do you Grow a THRIVING Facebook Community?

Join Us for our latest content series where we reveal what it takes to grow a Facebook community in 2013.     Here is a sneak peak of what we will be revealing:

• Facebook Mindset – Get this RIGHT before you start
• Facebook’s “Billboard” Affect
• The TOP 10 Rules You need to Follow To Grow Your Facebook Community
• How To Monitor and Track Your Results
• Top Content Strategies to Grow Your Community  - What to Post and When to Post
• Facebook Ads – so you thought Facebook Marketing was FREE?

And much More…

We will be posting new content EACH week on our blog — grab it here or Get the Content Delivered Straight To You!

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Online Reputation Has Never Been So Important – And it All Starts with Developing a Reputation Mindset

Story Sponsored by

There is a famous saying that goes like this:  ”It takes a lifetime to build a reputation – and it only takes  a few  moments to ruin it….”      Do you believe it to be true?

Think about how hard businesses have to work to build a good reputation in the marketplace.   Business owners pour their blood, sweat and tears into creating a brand that has a good reputation.   In most cases, the business owners spend more time at their place of business- than with their families.   The business becomes their “baby” – and a good reputation is what they have been working so hard for.

The sad fact is – most business owners are not into the correct Reputation Mindset for 2013.    Customer behavior has (and will continue to) change at an alarming rate.     The customer has more control now than they have had in 50 years.    Customers are demanding a certain level of service and if they do not get it – even if it was not directly the businesses fault – they are going to the INTERNET and talking about it.   The results this can have on a business are absolutely devastating.   

Developing A Reputation Mindset

Social Media sites  like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus (and a host of other social networking sites) connect the consumers in ways that have never been seen.   Smart phones accelerate  communication by offering “real time” collaboration – on any subject, at any time –> ANYWHERE.   Think about that – because it is a HUGE concept to swallow.    Allow me to elaborate so that you can get your mind around how big Online Reputation is:

Well known author Gary Vaynerchuk wrote a book a few years ago that absolutely nailed it:  ”The Thank You Economy”.     He gives the analogy of how businesses need to take a 1940 “butcher shop” mentality.   Get to know your customers, treat them exceptionally well and ALWAYS make sure your actions promote a 5 Star Reputation.      I couldn’t agree more with Gary’s analogy — and I will further the point by saying this (business owners PLEASE pay attention to this point):  It isn’t the loud, obnoxious customer that will deliver the devastating blow to your future business…. It’s the quite guy in the corner with 100,000 twitter followers you just ignored.   The guy that you forget to say hello to… the guy who won’t tell you what the problem  is – he would rather share it to his 100K twitter followers.    That’s the guy that is going to KILL YOUR FUTURE BUSINESS.

Businesses must develop a Reputation Mindset  and SYSTEM to make sure the voice of the happy customer is heard- online.   They must develop this mindset and implement very specific systems to make sure that an attack on their reputation doesn’t put them out of business.

How to Develop a Reputation Mindset

Developing a reputation mindset starts by identifying key areas in your business where customers are usually the most happy AND unhappy.   It’s important to identify  any trends and document them so you can go to work on them.   If there is a point in your sales process where you are noticing customers are edgy or unhappy – DOCUMENT it and work on a solution to fix it.   If there is a part of your sales process where people are exceptionally happy – DOCUMENT IT – and go to work developing a system where they leave a positive review (preferably online).

Solicit feedback from your customers regularily.   This will help you identify areas of your business where issues may be.   If you notice a customer is not happy — DO NOT IGNORE IT.   Ask them for their feedback- preferably in a controlled manner.    If a customer doesn’t say anything at all – ENGAGE THEM!   Ask “How was your visit today”  - or something to that effect.    Train your entire staff to work on getting feedback from your customers and ENGAGE with them regularily during their time with your business.

Develop a “Thank You” Culture in your business. It starts from the TOP down.   Everything you do in your business should be built around the customers experience.  Routinely train your staff to build an exceptional customer experience.  When they see a customer is happy – train your staff to solicit online reviews.    If your staff see’s an unhappy customer – train them to get them to leave feedback so that you can FIX the problem.

It ALL starts with Developing a Reputation Mindset.   The systems and strategies to grow a 5 star reputation may differ; however, the mindset is the same.   Focus on your customers experience and find a strategy to capture customers when they are happy – then make it EASY for them to tell the world about it !

Topic:  Developing an Online Reputation Mindset

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Posting to Facebook Can Be Time Consuming – Use this Cool Feature and Save Time

Story Sponsored by:  Social Media Dojo 

Highlights
00:14 – Posting to Facebook
00:23 – The Problem with Posting to Facebook
01:01 – Scheduling Your Posts on Facebook
02:50 – Make sure you do this – or it won’t work

Posting to your Facebook Fan Page  consistently is extremely important – it is also time consuming.   In this short video, we discuss a helpful tool that allows you to schedule your facebook posts.  Not many people know about this feature!  There are other 3rd party apps you can use to schedule posts; however, this feature is the most effective because it does not hurt your “edgerank score” .

You can literally schedule posts out a day, a week or months in advance using the scheduled posts feature.    You will still want to monitor your fan page daily (so that you can follow up on any questions, comments or concerns on your facebook; however, this feature will save you time – guaranteed!

Topic: Scheduling Your Facebook Posts

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Top Digital Marketing Stories from Around the Web…

It’s been a busy week at Digital Traffic Squad – we will traveling next week, so we wanted to get you a big list of the top stories from around the web-  by category….

To Your Success

- Digital Traffic Squad

Digital Marketing Stories

Top Search Engine Optimization Stories

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Optimizing Your Business for Google Local Search has Never Been So Important…

Unfortunately, many businesses are doing it wrong (so are many SEO Agencies). Check out the video below for a better understanding of what it takes to get found on Google’s local search.

TIP: The super simple formula for ranking in Google Local is –> Do more than what your competitors are doing.

Video Transcript 

Hey, its Jesse Erickson and I want to walk you through local search & optimization & what’s actually working into days market so were noticing company like Superpages.com sold a lot of packages  to local customers & local businesses they optimizing just for Superpages and they may have dibble & dubble some of the important sites but for the most important knowledge in search optimization at the local level. So what we do is we create a variety of sites & we do a lot of them. Sites like blogs, video sites, docs sharing sites, image sites and they all congruent with all your local listing, your google listing, its extremely important meaning  the name, address & phone number even the website must be congruent with the targeted keywords. So we go to your website & we make sure you got one dedicated page strickly for the local search meaning it is congruent with your local listing, your google local listing.

Then we go and either create or optimize if they are already created your local citation. Local citation is basically local directories. Sites like yelp.com, citysearch.com, judysbook. there’s a lot of them & we make sure they are 100% match to your google local listing that’s extremely important. Then it’s time to focus on reviews, you need a minimum of 10 reviews on your google local listing to earn what they called zagat rating. 10 is the magic number & lastly, you have to outrun your competition, we got software, we track what’s going on your targeted keywords & in your business, your business listing. To see who rank #1 & what are they doing, as long as you are doing more that they are, you are going to outrank them & one quick thing also I want  to mention, must have a physical location in targeted area that you actually want to rank. so if you are trying to rank or something were you don’t in a local search, if you are trying to rank or something a keyword & you don’t physically reside or you don’t have a physical present in there its going to be difficult to actually rank in the local seo. now I’m going to take you behind the scene & put this in a big map that you can walk through so you can get a better understanding of what we do for local seo.

Here’s the behind the scene peek of what we do with our local marketing package to promote your business in google local search. so let start right in. start with google local listing, your google local listing. what we do with our package is that we either claim if its hasn’t been claim or we begin to optimize the listing & we do that making sure the keyword match the target market. we use images and we actually build images in that keyword into the images. video, again the keywords are embedded, we make sure that the category is setup properly and properly optimize & we do complete keyword optimization on the listing. there’s a couple of tricks of the trade that we actually quick your keyword on target keyword into the listing in a very solemnly manner. then what we do is we build out your google plus profile. this is absolutely huge in 2013 & there’s also something called google authorship. It’s too much scope for this video but its very, very important you have this so we build out google plus & then we build out a local pages on the website, specific website & we make sure its congruent with your google local listing. you are going to hear me talk a lot about congruency because that’s really the key to your local marketing getting rank. all the sites & all the content that we put together must be congruent for your target keyword. so you need a specific page on your website that nears your actual google local listings. next citation, citation is nothing more than a directory submission to local directories such as yelp.com, citysearch, yellowpages there’s a tone of them. now the trick of doing it. it’s citation must match your google local listing 100% in the name, address & phone number & even the keywords must match the google local listing or you have a hard time ranking. we start with 30 sites and we go from them which is probably 200 sites that you can submit to. but the amount of sites that we submit to are directly proportional to your competition & we have a way of spying of what they doing so will be able to see how many sites your competition are listed on and we go from there. the last part of citation is building and establishing your review profiles same things is google plus. these are actually setting up profiles for customer to leave reviews. Ideally, you want to start building a 5 stars reputation and having your customers submit reviews to this sites. again it’s a little bit much for this particular video demonstration but you are really setting the table for a massive reviews distribution channels on to the next one. actually there’s one part I left out has to deal with reviews. I was talking about setting up citation for customer to leave reviews but on your google listing. if you really want to target 10 reviews that’s kind of a magic number . its going to help you optimize in search and its also going to issue you a called zagat rating and the zagat rating is nothing more than an establish number that google was set base on the reviews that you see. If you have questions on that please let me know but the magic number is you want 10 reviews on your site, on your google local listing.

The next phase is we start building local blogs, what I mean by that is actually we create series of blogs in wordpress, tumbler, blogspot, webs.com, identical, blog, bloggers, weebly, yulesites and webknows and we may also use those depending, anything that’s come that maybe new that may benefit you. we build this blog to submit content too and we make sure its congruent to your google local page. so the keyword, categories, name, address, and phone number are all match with your google local page. so we building variety on your actual website that your business located on. next video channels. video ranks very, very well with google and what we do is we build channels on youtube, dailymotion, vimeo and animoto.com and it’s a same concept we build them congruent with your target keywords, name address and phone number. so okay now we get even more variety. next is social media, extremely important and it’s a same concept. we are going to build a social media channel on facebook, twitter, google plus, linkedin all congruent with your google local page. so we may actually creating another facebook page strictly content distribution that really has no intentions being seen by the public. Its  just basically the juice of google local page. next we build out important image sites. these are sites like pinterest.com, flicker.com, imageshock, picasa, dotphoto, imber, shutterfly and again all congruent with your google local page and the last  is the PDF/Slideshow sites. these are sites likes scribd.com, duckstock, slide, author, google docs, slideshow.net once again all are congruent with your google local page. so here’s what going to look like by the time we are done creating this sites. what we have done is we created massive content network that we distributed content through that all point back to your google local page and we link them together actually. your facebook page link to your blogs, your blogs will have a link to your image sites and your iamge will be embedded on your blogs so it’s a massive content sites that all revolve around your target keywords and your google local listing page so this actually a very strong long term strategy that will boost not only your google local listing but you will get found in google and for a lot of other sites that we build in specially the local blogs and of course they are all link to your website as well to promote your website.  so that is the overview in blueprint of what we do within our local marketing package is extremely effective and it’s a lot more that what you can get with superpages.com. were they only optimizing you for superpages.com. so you can see a tone of variety at the end of the day you will have over 70 new website that your business is located on the local market. If you have any question I’m just a phone call or email away. Thank you.

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Citations for Businesses – The Inside Scoop

Citations have become an increasingly important part of online marketing for businesses.   A citation is nothing more than a business listing on a particular site.   Sites like yelp.com, citysearch.com, yellowpages.com and other local directory sites are referred to as “Citations”  [a citation in this context is NOT a ticket from a policeman]. 

There are literally hundreds of local citation sites across the web [and that number is growing].    It is extremely important that your business is listed on these sites for multiple reasons.

Citations Are Extremely Important for Your Business

First, these sites have live traffic on them – they are where your potential customers hang out.   Citation sites usually have an internal search feature (kind of like “googling” within each particular citation site).   Second, these sites normally have a “review” or “testimonial” feature – where ANYONE is free to talk about your company openly (in the form of online reviews).    It would be in your best interest to monitor what is being said because there are generally NO RULES governing what people can say about your business.    Lastly, the information found on these sites [in many cases] MAY NOT BE ACCURATE!!!!

These citation sites normally “scrape” information from data sources [i.e. other databases].    This presents a HUGE problem:  inaccurate data populating the internet about your business.     It could be a wrong address, a wrong phone number or even the wrong company name.     In many cases, businesses never actually posted their company information on the actual citation site(s) – it was scrapped from the data source.      This can have a compounding effect if the data is not accurate.

For example:  If citation site “A” has inaccurate information about your company – let’s say the wrong phone number – the next citation site that “scrapes” data from Citation Site “A” will automatically post inaccurate data to their own site- so instead of one site with wrong information, you now have two.   This can continue when new citation sites are created and data is “scraped”.

One of the biggest ranking factors for Local Search on Google is the accuracy of these citation sites – in particular NAME, ADDRESS and PHONE NUMBER.     One of the best things you can do to increase your rank in Google local search is to make sure your business name, address and phone number are a 100% match [identical] on as many sites as possible.   This helps verify the location of your business to Google [giving your physical location more credibility].    The more places your business is listed and the continuity of the NAME, ADDRESS and PHONE NUMBER across each platform, the better chance you have of ranking higher.     See Google Local Ranking Factors

So Why Should You Care About Citations?

The obvious reason is that you have more places for your business to be found online.    Citation sites are healthy for local businesses because it allows you to market your business where your customers are – all over the internet.   It is another channel to drive traffic to your business.     Consumers are on these sites – and they are leaving reviews about their experiences with the businesses they have bought from.    That means your business is being talked about – and your reputation is an open book.    It is in your best interest to have some type of ongoing strategy to build and maintain an online 5 star reputation (nothing converts better online than positive social proof: reviews)

Citations increase businesses exposure – and they help you rank better in google if optimized correctly.    Reach more people with a strong citation management system and your business will increase because of it.

Topic What Are Citations?

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Our Weekly Digital Marketing News

From around the web….

Social Media Sites Imagined as Party Goers
In today’s ultra-connected world where the Internet is your bestest (and only) real friend, it makes sense to party it down with your favorite social media sites While a roaring shindig with Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube and Reddit sounds like the soiree of the century, it turns out these social media sites have pretty irritating human personalities. At least according to this Cracked video. They brilliantly imagine a work place get together with these Internet “people” that proves you really don’t ever want to be friends with the World Wide Web SEE ALSO: SXSW Keynote: The Past, Present and Future of the Internet

Facebook Updates iOS App With Cover Photo Control
Facebook released version 5.6 of its iOS app Monday, giving users the ability to update their profile cover photo on the go. Users can now update their cover photo on the iPhone with a tap of their finger Simply tap on the cover photo in profile view and you can choose to view your cover photo, choose a new photo from your photo library or take a new photo. Select the photo you want and arrange it as desired, hit save, and you’re done. The update also promises fewer taps for creating group messages and easier ways to name and find group conversations. The Facebook for iOS update [iTunes link] is available in the App Store now.

Content Marketing Ranked By Return On Investment
The education marketing company worth its salt knows about content marketing. Not only is it an attempt to create authority to help search engine rankings, but also content helps convince potential customers about the value a brand can provide to their lives. One of the big problems with content marketing is its expense in relation [...]

5 Website Conversion Tips
Get higher conversions with these amazing tips! News Video Highlights: 00:34 – Compress your images with Smush IT 01:13 – Track your opt-ins by tagging the opt-in source 01:56 – Reduce stuff on your site to the essential items 02:33 – Make the customer the HERO of your website 02:59 – Make things obvious for [...]5 Website Conversion Tips is a post from: Super Fast Business with James Schramko

The Ugly Side Of Paid Social Media Traffic
Discover how to deal with the ugly side of paid media and how to get more site traffic. In this episode: 00:15 – Handling the ugly side of Facebook marketing 01:04 – Ban negative people from your page 01:11 – How to get massive amount of website traffic 01:53 – Wistia now works with auto-responders [...]The Ugly Side Of Paid Social Media Traffic is a post from: Super Fast Business with James Schramko

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Perfect for People That Visit the Same Sites Frequently

Author:  Jesse Erickson

00:11 – Intro to Speeddash.com
00:22 – What it’s designed for
00:33 – Don’t do this
00:44 – What I use it for

Hey, it’s Jesse Erickson here for your technology tip of the week. And in this week, I want to talk to you about a product called SpeedDash. Now, I am not affiliated with this product — this is an actual tool that I found about a month and a half ago and I’ve been using it every day in my business.  The tool is designed for people that do a lot of research online, or visiting a lot of the same sites day in and day out.  Instead of having to log in and out of each individual site  - this tool is one dashboard that you go to and you can set up things like Gmail, RSS Feeds, Calanders, Google Analytics.

There’s a lot of different things that you can do with this tool –  but what I use it for is to track a lot of different sites – and in research phase, like what I am getting ready to do a video like this, I actually go to speeddash.com and all the sources that I pull information from it aggregates, I have it all in one spot! So I am not out on, you know, fifty different sites a day. I go to one spot, I look at the topics that I want to research, and I just click on it and it is on one centralized location, so I pay a whapping five dollars a month for this product by the way. Its speeddash.com, I guarantee it’ll be a time saver for you, and if you have any questions or you have any comments, post them below. Appreciate you’re watching and we’ll see you next week

To Your Success….

Jesse Erickson

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Using Content Curation to Build Authority in Your Niche

Author:  Jesse Erickson 

00:14 - The Best thing you can do for your website

00:37 - Introducing Content Curation
00:57 - What the Ideal Content Curated Post Looks Like
01:26 - Why content curation is good for the other site
01:37 - How to Find Content to Curate
02:00 - RSS and Google Reader
02:30 - Mix in Fresh New Content

Hello, it’s Jesse Erickson and in this video I want to talk to you about the single biggest thing you can do to help your website and it revolves a wrong content. You must be updating your website with fresh new

Digital Marketing Tips

content preferred when a daily basis if not on a weekly basis. Ok, it is exactly what Google wants, and we’ are finding that the site’s that are updating their content the most are out wrecking the once that aren’t. So, I’m going to show you a real fast way that you can find content for your site, and it’s using a method called “Content Curation”so let’s dive right in to it.

Ok, so the concept that I want to talk to you about is called “Content Curation”. Ok, so the big big overview of Content Curation, you’re basically using other people’s content (legally and ethically) with your own unique spin. You are not stealing their content. But what you are doing is you’re actually borrowing their content and putting it on your site, but you’re giving them credit for it. So, the ideal Content Curated Post would look something like this. There’s a brief summary of what you’re taking on that particular article, and below it there’s a summary of the article with the link back to the actual source. Ok, so, if the person that wrote the article was to find it, they would see it’s not the whole article, you’re not replicating their content a hundred percent. But you are taking the curation or curative part of it, where they’ll like it because you are giving them a link back to their site, so, helps their Google Rankings, and its giving you fresh new content for your site. So, here’s our real quick tip on how you actually find this content.

We recommend that you spend some time upfront and identify the top sites in your niche, the top fifty sites if you can. New sites, blogs, and you’re gonna want to grab their arts as feed, ok, and you do that by the domainname/feed. Most websites of their publishing content will have a feed, and you’re going to put that into your Google Reader, ok, and Google Reader is basically just, it’s an aggregator of information on the internet, you put in a feed and it will display everything that, every post or every bit of content of that site putting out in a very very condensed version so you can split to it. Ok, so, when you do this, you’re going to be able to search your Google Reader to find the top stories that you want to curate, and that’s a real simple way to find content on your site! Now obviously, it pays big time to ma

ke sure you have your own content mixed in with this as well, you don’t want to just continually do Curating Content for your site, but when you have a Content Curation strategy and you get good at it, it’s a real quick way to add content that Google loves by the way to your website. So, there’s also other tools you can get out there to actually help you with the Content Curation, a process whether it is to research or actually posting to your site. Too much for this video here but stay tuned in the coming weeks, we will reveal some of those tools. So, hopefully you’ve enjoyed this tip, and we’ll see you next week.

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