Washington Wine Sales is a distributor of smaller and boutique wineries from the Pacific Northwest, including Cave B Estate Wineries, Dumas Station, JLC Winery, Page Cellars, and Haystack Needle. Owned and operated by my father, Bob Shearer, Washington Wine Sales distributes to restaurants, bars, grocery stores and specialty shops across Western Washington. Because of their ever changing selection and limited runs of specific wines, a dynamic web site was a must. I chose the build this site on the WordPress platform due to its user-friendly interface and slick, out-of-the-box functionality.

The site is based off of the Vigilance Theme, a clean two column design with plenty of room for custom elements. Among these, I created:

• A modified banner image to function as a secondary nav menu between winery-specific pages.
• A rotating sidebar image module to display wine country landscape photos.

While the client’s main goal with the web site was to promote his wineries to potential new accounts, it has already proved to be a resource for end-users looking for additional information about the wines themselves. After the site was built, I coached the client on the best practices in blogging with WordPress. Future plans for the site include a related posts element within each individual winery page, and a dedicated area for listing where each wine can be purchased by the public.

Visit Washington Wine Sales >>

Being a social media marketing professional, I can’t help but explore these companies’ various social networking profiles, because all too often their various networks have minimal updates, and almost never do they have anything that would compel me to follow/like them.

To all you companies out there that are just starting out in the social media world, or those that are already out there, but haven’t seen much success, consider first creating a reason for a person to visit and interact on your networks in the first place. And its not “because they like my company/brand/product”

Communities don’t simply form around your brand/product just because you created one, just like people won’t buy your product just because you are selling it. While its easy to tell you to engage your audience online, its not as easy to show you how. There are many tactics that can be used to entice users, but to be honest, it totally depends on your product or service.

One common tactic is to offer exclusive content, or insider access to individuals on your social networks.  While special promotions or contests may serve well to create a burst of interaction on your networks, just like an e-blast will create a spike in your website’s traffic, they aren’t sustainable. Once your special deal or insider offer expires (or gets buried by the rest of the noise on these networks), engagement will fall off, so it is important to find the right balance/frequency of these. Another tactic is to use your social networks for customer relationships/support purposes. It may not get you a ton of followers, but it can be a valuable tool both from a customer retention perspective and an internal cost saving measure.

Ultimately, The path you take with social media must be one of value to the user. Monitor other businesses and their success stories, but don’t simply copy them.  Map out exactly what problem is solved by being on these social networks, or what specifically you intend to achieve with them. A flexible, well thought out social media strategy will be the one that wins.

Its basically a publishing/subscribing platform that essentially allows for nearly instantaneous communication between publishers and subscribers. You may be familiar with RSS (Really Simple Syndication) in which you subscribe to the “feed” of a dynamic web site, oftentimes a blog like this one. RSS makes it easy to read and keep up to date with blogs and news sites that interest the subscriber, and are  typically organized in a reader, such as Google Reader. The RSS reader then periodically checks the blog’s feed for new content, and then displays it to the subscriber once the publisher makes it available. The only trouble with this arrangement is that the whole process is not instantaneous. The reader checks the feed often for new content, but its a pull-based scenario. The reader won’t know you have new content until it goes and checks. What if the publisher could automatically notify the reader, and thus the subscriber, the instant that it posted something new? Thats PubSubHubbub.

In a world where we rely on social networking sites to give us real time information, RSS in its original form just can’t keep up. Enter PubSubHubbub (or the less silly sounding PuSH), which basically adds a hub between the publishers and subscribers of an RSS feed, that receives content from the publisher and pushes it to the subscriber. The hub basically acts like a messenger boy between the blog and their subscribers, and he can run fast. We all know how reliant the world has become on Twitter and other social networks to communicate online in the real time. For those situations where 140 characters just won’t cut it, PubSubHubbub becomes the  key to expanding the real time web to encompass blogs as well.

What it also means, I’ve discovered, is that search engines will treat your blog in much the same way as an RSS subscriber, and  will crawl your site almost immediately after an update is made. While this may not mean you will jump 6 spots in the organic search results the moment you post a new blog post, it means that you, the publisher, are able to vastly shorten the time-span between when you post content and when it gets found.

Right now the PuSH protocol only works for feed based content, meaning that your static HTML page won’t get this fancy feature in the near future. If you have a WordPress blog (and lets face it, you should), you can take full advantage of PubSubHubbub today. WordPress-hosted blogs (WordPress.com) automatically receive this new functionality,  and self-hosted blogs (WordPress.org) can install the no-nonsense PuSHPress plugin. WordPress is fast becoming the preferred content publishing platform on the web today, and this new PuSH functionality is just icing on the cake.

Did you find this information useful? Leave a comment below, or share it with a friend!

So now that you’ve claimed your listing, you’re done, right? Wrong. Just like your web site, optimizing your listing is the key to getting found.  While creating your listing or claiming an existing one will get you listed, where you show up is crucial. I’ve outlined a few of the generally accepted best practices in local search engine optimization below.

But first, lets clarify exactly how rankings on Google Local work, as they are a different beast than your average search. At its core, Google Local is an extension of Google Maps, displaying relevant businesses, destinations, and landmarks to users searching a specific geographic area. Thanks to the advent of Google Universal Search, these geographically relevant results are now integrated into the main search results of Google, bringing more relevant results to users in less time. Google will only choose to display the most important listings on the main search results page, while the rest are hidden unless the user clicks “see more results”.  So your goal, just like with your web site, is to rank as close to the top as possible for your chosen keywords, thereby garnering you the greatest amount of exposure to potential visitors. So how exactly do you climb the rankings? Read on to find out!

Get Rid of the Duplicate Listings

The next step is to ensure that you have no duplicate listings to your same business already on Google. These may be under different names, or have slightly varied content in them. Duplicate listings can exist for a number of reasons, such as if the business was renamed, moved, or someone mistakenly created a new listing. In any of these situations, you should ensure that there is only one listing for each physical address. Duplicate listings can be penalized by Google, and can seriously hurt your ranking. This is probably one of the trickiest aspects of optimizing a local listing, because its not always clear where there are duplicates, and even if it is, suspending or merging listings can be almost impossible. Google will attempt to merge listings when possible, but it is far from perfect, and it is ultimately up to you to sort it all out.

Complete Your Listing

Remember all those fields you saw while claiming your listing? Take some time to go through each and ensure each are accurate and properly filled out. The categories section is particularly important, although be careful about simply keyword stuffing here. Pick logical categories that are recognized by Google. Watch out for a miscategorized listing, as this is a common cause of poor ranking. Picking strong categories is an oft forgotten tactic. Adding photos, videos, and description, are also important, although mainly for the person viewing your listing. The search engines put little emphasis on these.

Build and Manage Your Off-Site Information

You may have noticed on your listing or others that certain information includes a green subtitle that lists the name of another directory, like InsiderPages, or Judy’s Book. These are what are called content providers, and are a key factor in the way Google chooses to rank your listing. The beauty of Google Local, and the real reason why it is the most important directory to be on, is that it pulls information from sites around the web. So if someone reviews your business on a site like SuperPages, chances are you will see it on your Google Local listing sooner or later as well.

With this in mind, it is advantageous to your listing to seek out your information on these content providing directories and ensure the information is accurate and complementing your Google Local listing. These directories often have additional functionality or sections to include, which could end up giving you an edge on your competitors, simply from the number of citations your listing has. There are literally hundreds of generic directories that your business’ information, and additional, specific directories to your trade/industry. While you certainly can try and scour the web trying to perfect every last directory listing, the ones you should focus most on are the ones that are already providing content to your listing. From there you can branch out into other niche directories or content providers that are relevant to your industry.

Reviews are King

Try as you might to complete all the steps above, you may still lose to competitors in the rankings simply because you don’t have as many reviews as them. While any business will want to maximize positive reviews and minimize the negative reviews, from the search engine’s perspective its all about quantity. Encouraging your clients to write reviews, either on Google or on one of their content providers will help ensure you climb the rankings and keep your foothold as competitors begin to wise up.

Watch and Learn From Your Competitors

If you are getting consistently outranked by competitors, do some research and find out why. Chances are, the top dogs are doing something you’re not. Most likely they have more reviews than you, but you’d be surprised how many high ranking competitors haven’t even claimed their listings yet. You aren’t going to find many other instances where you can catch your competition sleeping on the job, so take advantage of it!

While I focused this discussion on Google Local, you can also use a similar strategy for Yahoo and Bing Local. Don’t be fooled though: Google is still far and away the most important of the three, so it is the one you should always focus on first, regardless of your industry. Try a few of these local search optimization tactics, and let me know how it goes. This is certainly not a definitive list, and new features and optimization tactics are emerging all of the time.  It is my hope that these tips get you started on the right path. Did you find this information useful? Leave a comment below, or share it with a friend!

Since Google has started using universal search to combine photos, videos, and maps into the main search results, ranking well in Google Local is becoming increasingly important to your online marketing strategy.

It’s easy to claim your listing, but optimizing it isn’t always so straightforward. Google recently did a major revamp of the Local Business Center, and has continually tweaked and changed the system since its inception.   In this two part series, I will show you how to claim your listing, and how best to optimize it.

Click to view the larger image

Find Your Listing

To claim your listing, first go to Google and search to see if a listing already exists. Unless your business or location is new, it’s highly likely that Google has already generated a listing. The best way to find it is to use a geographically-relevant keyword search. For example, if your business is Peso’s Kitchen and Lounge, search for “Bar lower Queen Anne Seattle”. If you click on “115 reviews”, it will take you to the Google Places Page for Peso’s.

click to see larger image

You can see there is a lot of information about the business here, including photos, hours, and reviews submitted by other directories and web sites. You can tell if a listing has been claimed by the business owner if at the top it says “Owner-verified listing”. As you can see in this example, Peso’s hasn’t yet claimed their listing. Click “Business Owner?” to get started with editing and claiming your listing.

click to see larger image

Edit Your Listing

The next screen gives you a couple of options. You are required to prove to Google you are the business owner before editing or suspending any listing, for obvious reasons.

Once you click “edit my business information”, you are presented with a form with plenty of fields about your business to fill out. Right now, don’t worry about filling everything out, but the listing must have at least one category to proceed. For this example we would type in “Bar”. Another thing to check for is that the address and phone number are correct. You will need these to be accurate to claim your listing. When you are satisfied, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click “Submit”.

click to see larger image

Claim Your Listing

At the next screen, you are ususally given two options to claim your listing: a phone or postcard verification. The reason why I say “ususally” is that if you changed your phone number on the last screen, Google will want you to verify via postcard, and vice-a-versa. I recommend using the phone verification over the postcard, because it lets you claim your listing right away, and limits the possibility of the postcard getting lost or mistaken for junk mail by you or your employees (If this happens, you can always send a new postcard). If you choose the phone verification, the phone number on the listing will receive an automated phone call from Google, usually within a few seconds. It will provide you with a 5 digit pin number, which you should write this down, and then fill it out in the field it provides.

Your listing is now claimed and validated, and you are free to edit it as needed. Be advised that if your phone number or address is changed afterwards, you will need to validate the change in the same way as outlined above. Now that you’ve claimed your listing, check out part II, where I show you how to optimize your Google Local listing.

Was this information helpful? Leave a comment below!

Earlier today, Director of Programming for Xbox Live, Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb asked his sizable twitter audience the following:

What new features would you like to see in the Xbox LIVE Twitter or Facebook applications? I think we know…but tell us

Months ago, Microsoft was first to take a step into the social networking space, adding apps for Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm to Xbox Live, the pay-to-play online network of the Xbox 360 gaming console. The Twitter app was essentially a simplified client to view and send tweets, with support for twitter search and trending topics as well. Though it worked just fine, there was hardly any value to tweet on the Xbox, for without a keyboard, the process of posting and responding to tweets proved to be quite laborious.

The Facebook app took the integration further, allowing users to post status updates along with the ability to edit their profile, and view photo albums. Arguably the most useful feature though was the ability to find facebook friends that also have Xbox Live. This Facebook app was a refreshing step in the right direction of integrating social media with gaming platforms in a truly useful way,

While I gave each app a fair shake, there wasn’t much substance to them, and little incentive to use them again (with the one exception noted above). I had all but forgotten about the whole affair until I saw Major Nelson’s tweet this afternoon, and that got me thinking.

Allow me to look up the gamertags of people I follow on Twitter, along with those who follow me.

Just like the Facebook friend lookup, why wasn’t a similar feature for twitter rolled out as well? Though I’m sure there’s a solid argument that the average Xbox Live user who is on Facebook is also likely on Twitter too, your friend/follower audience does not necessarily overlap completely. For me at least, plenty of my Facebook friends have 360s, but most of them are not followers of my gaming blog’s twitter account.  It seems like a fairly no-brainer, simple feature to implement, yet here we are without it.

Make Xbox.com more public, and integrate social streams from Facebook and Twitter as well.

Xbox, being a Microsoft product, has benefited from some of the natural synergies of other MS brands, such as the Windows Live ID. Xbox.com allows the player to log in with their Windows Live ID, view their friends, check achievements, etc. While a pretty cool idea on paper, the reality is a somewhat half-baked social network that is completly invisible to non xbox-live users, and has a frankly ugly interface.

But what if Xbox.com functioned almost like the World of Warcraft Armory, where you could look up anyone who had live (or by email address), check out their games, achievements, etc, all without necessarily needing to log in first. What if you could integrate your Facebook and Twitter streams? To me, Xbox.com is such a missed opportunity, one that sites like Raptr and GamerDNA have managed to fill in the interim.

There is a missing link. People like to share the networks that they are on. Look at all the social media icons on the sidebar of this blog, or any blog for that matter. Notice anything missing? Why can’t I link to my  Gamertag profile? Xbox Live is heavily reliant on network externalities, the idea that the value of a network grows as the number of people using it increases. So shouldn’t Microsoft want for me to  promote to everyone and their dog that I am on Xbox Live, and they should join too? It sure seems like a no-brainer to me.

Get these features out of the submenus, and put them front and center.

Probably what has hamstrung the Twitter application most is the fact that it was not readily available on the dashboard, you have to first go down to the community section, find the twitter icon, and then enter it. Its not available from the main xbox menu. And you know something? It needs to be. I need to be able to hit the xbox button on my controller, and in fewer steps than I can count on a hand, be able to post a status update. That update needs to be visible as my avatar’s “motto”, the small chat bubble that appears over Xbox Live member’s avatar when their profile is viewed. I need to be able to view any of my friends profiles and instantly be able to see their Twitter handle, if applicable, along with their linked Facebook account (should they choose to display it).

Stop hiding these applications if you expect people to use them regularly. Make it easier to update your status. Perhaps its offering the word predicting feature that the PS3 has. Perhaps its allowing you to tweet out your achievement the moment you receive it (I personally think status updates full of achievement notifications are annoying, but I know there are people that love this,  so there is definitely a market). Offer the ability to tweet the group you are in and the game you are playing, so that other friends that may not be logged on, but are watching their twitter feed will see it, and be able to hop on and join the party.

I doubt I am sparking any epiphanies for Major Nelson and the  Xbox Live team with these ideas, but you asked, so I answered.

Did you tune into YouTube on Sunday to catch U2 performing live form the Rose Bowl? If you did, you had some serious virtual company.

The LA Times reports that Sunday’s show generated 10 million streams across 7 continents. The whole show was archived on YouTube Monday and has been viewed more than 1 million times since then.

YouTube is calling the U2 concert the largest event in the company’s history and it very well could be a glimpse into what the Google -owned service plans in the future. After all, it’s hard to make money off of short-form content, but with live streams, YouTube could potentially capitalize and maybe even come up with a payment model (a la Pay-Per-View) for really big events.

I think this was an ambitious experiment that certainly seemed to work, at least for U2. I could see myself paying for a live concert or event on a streaming video site, I’m just not sure that site should be YouTube.

For a site that has been free-with-advertising for so long, I’m just not sure if a pay-per-view model will necessarily work with the brand that has been established for the site. Take the example of YouTube’s fairly recent expansion into movies and TV Shows. Despite the rather limited offering, I’m not sure how big of a dent it has actually made in Hulu’s market share for free, full length video.

Perhaps there is room for a new online video competitor dedicated to pay-per-view streaming broadcasts of live concerts and events. Thoughts?

Posted via web from Jeff’s posterous

Great news! You can now you can post your updates from CoTweet to Facebook, LinkedIn, Yammer and dozens of other social networks.

Ping.fm is now integrated with CoTweet so you can publish once through CoTweet and automatically send your updates across the real time web. You can set up a unique Ping.fm posting group or account with each of your Twitter accounts, so you have ultimate control over which updates go where — essential for people managing multiple business accounts or a combination of business and personal accounts.

Set up instructions are available in the CoTweet Support Forum, which you can access once you’re logged in. Enjoy!

Filed under Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter for Business, Your Brand on Twitter, features • Permalink

via blog.cotweet.com

Co-tweet has always seemed like a great idea to me for businesses that need to manage multiple twitter accounts with multiple users, but it still isn’t where it should be, and it certainly isn’t a solution yet. I think this trend of “simulcasting” your updates to multiple networks from one location is valuable, but there really hasn’t been a great business solution yet.

CoTweet does still have its limitations: it is currently in beta and only 6 profiles are allowed to be managed per account. This really won’t scale for the bigger guys, but I think many people, even smaller agencies, would be willing to pay for less restrictions.

This new Co-Tweet feature is further hindered by the inability to see the responses to an update sent out to a linked Facebook fan page, LinkedIn Profile, etc. It limits what should be a two way dialogue into a broadcast medium with no ability to track the conversation. This new feature does not save me time if I still have to go into the individual networks to check to see the response.

I’d love to see someone tackle the heart of the problem, but given the rate of evolution in the social media world, the next few months will be interesting.

Posted via web from Jeff’s posterous

I must have missed the boat on MySpace during its heyday, but it certainly has lost relevance recently. The one thing I have always appreciated on MySpace is the music aspect. Perhaps this is just a sign that their intended size is no long realistic, and they should be refocusing on the needs of bands.

The music-focused social network market seems much less competitive than the general do-all be-all that Facebook has come to dominate. I could see MySpace making a strong case against the likes of Last.fm.

Posted via web from Jeff’s posterous