Tree Swing Marketing Story

I clearly remember how appalled I was when IBM told us (us being technical employees known as CEs or SSRs) we had to start selling.

Selling was a dirty word to me.

Marketing and sales were the people who promised what we could not deliver and pressured customers to buy what they did not want or need.

Customers trusted techs and we did not want to lose their trust.

In most organizations, marketing is paid much more because they are seen as an income source. The IBM salesman I knew best made 25 times what I made (and the IBM CEO pay is 530 times more) and their phones did not ring all hours of the day and night like mine did.

Support staff is paid much less because they are considered an expense instead of an asset. At least in IBM’s case that is a serious mistake because what we once called Customer Engineers and later called SSRs are the only IBM employees most customers see on a regular basis and the primary reason those customers keep buying IBM equipment. But we’re getting off track.

Let me explain WHY marketing is NOT Evil.

I know that I am not the only person who had a negative view of marketing. The thing is, if there were no marketing we would not know who offered what we need and want. If a business doesn’t market well and close sales they can’t stay in business. Marketing and sales are both essential to us as buyers and to make an honest living. What we need is a different perspective on marketing.

Marketing is how we find what we want and need.

Marketing is how we know who does what. Businesses must have a marketing plan so we will know what they do. No matter what that plan is – even if it is only a sign in the window or handing out business cards – the purpose is always just that: to make sure those who need or want what they offer know about their products and services.

Marketing is essential to small business success and small businesses are essential to improving our standard of living.

If we want the most people possible to live a comfortable life with at least a roof over their heads, clothes to wear and enough to eat we have to change how we feel about marketing.

Why do we buy from Corporations whose commercials depict us as insects, animals or stupid? Why do many pay for clothing and products that make them walking billboards for brands?

Why is that kind of marketing acceptable while we refuse to allow small businesses to reach out to us? We create forums but refuse to allow them to add a link to their business or a description in a signature line.

We install dofollow CommentLuv and KeywordLuv and then delete quality comments seeking anchor text or even report any business leaving comments as a spammer.

What we need is a change in perspective.

Small traditional and online businesses are best for our economy because almost every penny we spend with them is almost immediately spent with other businesses.

When you buy your groceries from your local independent grocer or through a Food Coop or Consumer Supported Agriculture you support all the suppliers and businesses they use.

Money we spend with small businesses improves our economy and increases the standard of living for all.

What you spend in stores owned by multi-national publicly traded corporations goes to support boards earning seven figure executive compensation and continue to pay huge bonuses while their employees barely make a living wage – or for many of the worst Corporations do NOT make a living wage.

“The chasm between America’s haves and have-nots has reached Grand Canyon-esque proportions. Thirty years ago top executives at S&P 500 companies made an average of 30 times what their workers did — now they make 300 times what their workers make.“

Is it any wonder that the new television show Undercover Boss is so popular? This income disparity has a serious negative impact on our economy, on each of us and on everyone else in the world.

“Income inequality now is at an all-time high: The top 1 percent of Americans earn a quarter of all income, and the top 10 percent earn 50 percent.” More on tying CEO to employee pay.

If 50 percent of all income is in the hands of 10% of all Americans how much of that money do you believe is kept circulating where it can support other businesses and improve the economy?

How much of YOUR income do you spend? For a huge percentage of Americans the answer would be ALL of it and then some!

If we put more of our money directly into the hands of people who spend it our economy WILL improve and so will our standard of living!

Small business is key to improving our economy and is the bright spot in creating jobs – and not just any job – better jobs that pay well and have a future! Gallop estimates 30 million Americans – over 20% of Americans – are already underemployed.

Many are working two jobs and still making only a third of their former pay not to mention loss of benefits and the impact on their lives of working all the time and still not making ends meet.

How we as individuals can change all this.

We should all be getting excited because WOMM has made it possible for us to know which businesses and products to avoid!

I will borrow a quote from Andy Sernovitz‘ new book Secret and Mysterious Order of Word of Mouth, a book I highly recommend:

“Word of mouth marketing only works if you have good products and services. It only works if people like you and trust you. (If you’re a jerk,word of mouth with backfire horribly on you.)

If your product or service sucks, no PR campaign, clever TV ad, or announcement on your website will make consumers believe that it doesn’t. Not any more. And the speed of word of mouth on the Internet spreads the truth almost instantly.

You won’t hear a lot of good word of mouth about cable companies.

When word of mouth works, good companies are rewarded with gobs of free advertising and attention, and they make more money.

When word of mouth works better, bad products and bad companies are punished with negative buzz, and they lose customers.

Think about what this means for you and your family. We have a new social force that rewards companies with free marketing, sales and profits when they treat people well and produce good products. The same force stops companies from treating people badly by killing their sales.

For the first time in the history of modern business, we have a force for good that is also driven by the all-powerful profit motive. For years, government regulators and consumer advocates have tried to use legal and public pressure to make companies treat people well. I’ll bet that the profit motive works better.

This is why word of mouth marketing is so exciting. Everyone can do it. It makes money. It makes products and services more exciting. It makes business more honest and ethical.

It is better for all of us.

If you have a business or blog you need a copy of this book so you will avoid making mistakes that stay online forever. Also visit his site for viral marketing ideas on how to make your online activities memorable to tap into the power of viral marketing. (Follow Andy Sernovitz on Twitter)

We can each bring more power faster to word of mouth marketing. Marketing is NOT evil when it is honest and ethical. It is only evil when it is deceptive and only benefits the already wealthy.

Bloggers are especially important to making sure that small businesses thrive and we need to take action NOW while we still have small and online businesses to support!

Most ecommerce and online businesses receive 60-90% of all their traffic and sales from one search engine that has publicly announced their intention to focus on brands to “clean up” the Internet.

Any traffic not directly attributable to that search engine is likely to also have been found using that search engine.

We must preserve our ability to find the businesses, products and services we want to use and a great way to do that is to start supporting them with our spending and by recommending them.

It wouldn’t hurt to use a different search engine too. DuckDuckGo is my favorite search engine and I hope you’ll try it out because their results are cleaner and every site I can find in you know where has been in theirs (and yes, I do test that regularly).

WHAT ELSE YOU CAN DO:

Participate in our BizLuv MEME to Support Small Businesses to support your favorite businesses, causes and blogs. You can get involved in Blog Outreach or join our private blog collaboration which has developed a process for generating and sharing unique guest blog posts.

If you own or work for a business, you MUST learn how to market it. The survival of your business will depend on it.  You do not have to have money to spend and anyone can get free advice on what works and what doesn’t right here.

We are continually working and testing new methods especially for businesses like the Florida Millwork company Good Millwork hard hit by the economy such as those in the home improvement, construction and real estate niche. If we can make it work for them it can work for any business.

SCARY SEARCH ENGINE FACTS:

• Six Delusions of Search Engine’s Arrogant Leaders

UNDEREMPLOYMENT:

• Working Two Jobs and Still Underemployed
• Reuters: The Massive Cost of Underemployment
• Underemployment is a Growing Problem Even as the Job Market Turns

INTERESTING GRAPHS and VIDEOs on the WAR ECONOMY:

• Why the Internet Scares Politicians
• Spending Freeze When Hell Freezes Over (See the graph Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes at the very bottom.)
• The Cost of War
• War is a Racket by Smedley Butler who was was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.This is the very best speech on the truth of war I have ever heard. I read a portion of it years ago and have been looking for it ever since. I sincerely hope everyone will take the time to watch it. It could change your life and the lives of everyone else on this planet.In recognition of its excellence I share here the StumbleUpon review of War is a Racket posted by mystiker:”This a re-enactment of the famous speech by two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Smedley Butler. Although the speech is dated around World War II the theme of the message is timeless.Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed “The Fighting Quaker” and “Old Gimlet Eye”, was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.

  During his 34 years of Marine Corps service, Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (the highest Marine medal at its time for officers), and subsequently the Medal of Honor twice. Notably, he is one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, and one of only three to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two different actions.”

This benefits Bloggers and Online Businesses too. You do need to provide a physical address and phone number to be listed in most directories.

Nielsen Consumer surveys clearly show the importance of having an Internet presence. Among the latest Nielsen statistics is this:

74% of people determine who they will do business with locally using online computerized search engines such as Google and Yahoo!

These directories offer many advantages to anyone wishing to get more visibility for their local or online business.

WHAT ARE LOCAL LISTINGS?

• Local Listings are similar to an ad in the printed Phone Book Yellow Pages
• They are only online and they contain far more information than even a full page print ad would have

HOW LOCAL LISTINGS BENEFIT THE PUBLIC

• Quickly and easily find businesses by name, type of business, services offered or specific products sold
• Instantly access additional information such as payment methods accepted, hours open, maps and directions, special offers and coupons
• Increase customer confidence when trying new businesses by providing reviews written by actual customers
• Save disappointment and money by avoiding unethical or unfriendly people, bad food or service, exorbitant prices, and other negative experiences

HOW LOCAL LISTINGS BENEFIT BUSINESSES

• Most Local Listings are free to submit, have no recurring fees, and stay online indefinitely
• The majority (74%) of Internet users find businesses and products using Local Listing sites
• Because Local Listing directories are high traffic, high profile sites the incoming links they provide will greatly benefit your search engine listing placement – even if your business is totally online and NOT local.
• They are a great way to get totally free advertising and grow your business

SHOULD YOU DO IT YOURSELF?

• Submitting your own listings is extremely time-consuming (30-100+ hours to do it well)
• The submission process can be very confusing and every site is different
• It is better to do it yourself than not be listed at all
• Letting us do it for you will give you better results because there is more going on in the computer databases than can be easily explained or understood – even by long time Internet users

Want to be listed? Gather this information on your business and use it to list yourself or send it to us.

Want more information? See our Local Search Listing Service process.

1. Spend no money by doing it yourself manually starting with the links in our Local Search Directories post.
2. Save yourself 30-100+ hours of manually submitting your listing on each directory site by paying Universal Business Listing (UBL) $30 for 76+ Local Search Directory listings and do the keyword research and copywriting work yourself.
3. Hire us to ensure comprehensive descriptions, thorough keyword research and optimized copywriting. We submit your listings using UBL and then upgrade them manually.

We recommend using UBL for these reasons:

1. It takes so many hours to add your business to just the larger directories that few ever finish doing it manually.
2. They can get your business listed faster than it would be listed if you submitted manually to each directory.
3. It costs less to pay them $30 for all the listings they create than you could create them yourself manually because some of the directories charge more per listing than UBL charges for their entire service.
4. They can get your business listed almost immediately in the infoUSA directory that feeds 85% of online directories (including Google Local Search,  Yahoo! Yellow Pages, Microsoft Live Local Search (now Bing), AOL brands including Compuserve, Netscape and Mapquest, and 90% of in-car navigation systems. Getting listed in infoUSA usually takes 30-60 days.

While you could submit your own listings – and if that is the only choice you can afford  – then by all means do it because any listing is better than no listing.

As a business owner, your time is better spent running your business instead of investing the thirty to 100+ hours required to learn and implement the process yourself.

To maximum your results, it is best to work with someone who understands how search engines work, knows how to do keyword research, and has advanced copywriting skills.

Why? I know someone is going to want to know what difference it makes who creates the listings. The short answer is what key words they select. Search engines and directories can only find the words included in your listing. Most businesses only use the most obvious words to describe what they do.

If you only mention 10% of what you offer, you will miss 90% of potential business opportunities, leads, and sales.

Let’s use just one company as an example. Since I know Good Millwork won’t mind I’ll use them. If they or most anyone else created their local search listing they might write that they are a Millwork company and that would be accurate.

There is nothing in the process at each Local Search Directory that explains that you need to include somewhere in each listing every word that someone searching for your business would use.

We want to weave words describing ALL of the services and products they offer into each listing so that they will show up not just for millwork but for as many searches as possible. For example:

• Exterior shutters is more important than just shutters because there are more searches for interior shutters (which they do not sell) than for exterior shutters which they do
• Architectural moldings can also be called door moldings or window trim or door and window mouldings
• Crown molding is an important type of molding for them so we definitely want it to be in every listing
• Wood siding might also be called exterior siding or house siding or wooden siding
• Chair rail is a unique type of molding that will be easier to rank for so we want to include it
• Genuine mahogany and mahogany moldings are kept in stock so they want to be sure they can be found for those searches
• Deadhead sinker cypress is a very rare wood valuable enough that it is often shipped great distances
• TimberSIL ecofriendly rot-proof, virtually fireproof treated wood is new and a great way to go green that they actively promote
• LEEDs credits are important to green building architects so we want to make sure we include them in our listings
• They offer a free molding search tool and free downloadable approved architectural 3D CAD Drawings

These are only a sampling. There are vastly more keywords to be researched for each business to capture their niche in the marketplace. It is highly unlikely that without guidance any business would think to include all these unusual words in their listings. It is equally unlikely that most Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firms would take the time to understand your business to the depth we will.

There is nothing in any Local Search Directory process that reminds you to include the names of the counties, towns, major geo metro closest to you, or significant landmarks or related locations in your listings. If you do include them your listing will show up for those searches. If you do not it will not.

We have vast experience and technical skills in keyword research and copywriting that greatly increase how much visibility your listings will receive. There is a huge demand for these skills and we are willing to assist others interested in learning this type of work.

To discuss how we can work together to grow your business see our Local Search Directory Services.

The best WordPress Themes automatically nofollow certain unimportant fields and since we use Thesis that is true here. The nofollow tags Will is seeing are on the Twitter links, dates, and reply links in the comments – not on your anchor text links to your sites.

The best way to determine whether a site adds no follow to links to yours is by using a tool such as the link checker in the SEOBook Toolbar. If you already have the Toolbar look for the red double-arrow to the right of the orange RSS feed icon as shown in the image below:

Highlight No Follow Links

If you have the toolbar turned on (click on the word SEOBook on the far left of the toolbar to toggle the tool off and on) and click on the red Highlight NoFollow Links icon, all nofollowed links on the page will be highlighted in red.

As you can see in the example image below, Thesis has automatically nofollowed the links for reply, dates, and to your Twitter account and the links to your sites using your selected anchor text and the CommentLuv featured posts are dofollow:

What is No Followed at GrowMap - What is Do Followed

Our source code is visible, but if you want to see the source code on sites where it isn’t use this View HTML Source Code Viewer. Some sites move their source code off-page as part of advanced SEO strategies.

We recommend you check the status of the many links on your blog or site using the free SEOBook Toolbar of one of the other alternatives. It is not a bad idea to nofollow unimportant links.

NEW: Have you seen Kikolani’s latest DoFollow list?
High PR DoFollow Blogs Including .EDU sites

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Image Credit ft.com TechBlog

Yelp has been repeatedly accused of manipulating reviews to pressure businesses to advertise with them. Based on the information we share in this post and much more we have seen, we no longer recommend Yelp to business owners.

The East Bay Express article Yelp and the Business of Extortion cites twelve separate instances where business owners confirmed these accusations plus a former contract employee’s statement plus Yelp’s own admission that they pay employees to write business reviews.

Based on the thorough reporting in this story, all the previous similar complaints over the years, and the reviews of Yelp we have read (some of which are excerpted below) it is our opinion that Yelp has lost credibility and using them presents more danger than benefit to business owners. Businesses already listed there may wish to be cautious about their activities.

We base our recommendations on much research and include these excerpts among hundreds we found that seem particularly credible:

Reviews of Yelp: This one by Nick R: This site has dubious integrity. I’ve spoken to many business owners who refused an advertising package with Yelp, then Yelp suddenly removed all of their positive reviews, claiming they were “fraudulent.” There is no doubt a lot of manipulation in reviews done by the Yelp staff based on those who do, or do not, advertise on this site.

And half the reviews here can be summed up as “omg, I came here for the first time in a group of 20 and had bad service, i’ll never go back.” Which is beyond useless, when you come big group and only try an establishment once, your chances of everything going smoothly approach nil.

Excerpt of Yelp Review by member Penguin: “First and foremost, I personally know of 4 friends who have Yelped a business we have gone to in Oregon. With me, there were 5 reviews. However, if you go to this business, you will find only 1 review. The other 4 are not seen by the general public. They say this is a random program by their computer. I say it’s bullshit. If it were my business missing 75% of reviews, even if some were mixed, I would be upset. Show them all and let them get flagged if we suspect foul play!”

Review of Yelp written by Gary N: Here’s what you need to know about Yelp, whom you probably trust:

Yelp’s insistence that “everyone’s opinion counts equally” is a lie. The fact is they randomly censor and withhold reviews without offering any justification to the reviewer. They answer to no one in these matters.

They also have a policy, and pay a force of representitives to visit businesses that are reviewed on Yelp, that borders on extortion. For years, yelpers who wanted to review a business, or check out a business’ reviews were taken to that business page, where they could do just that. Suddenly, banners appeared on highly rated reviews (5 stars) that advised “you may want to check out “X”, usually a much lower rated competitor.

Then they send their paid squad out to inform that business that this unpleasant leaching of your hard earned reputation by a sub-quality competitor WHICH THEY HAD PLACED THERE can go away if you were willing to pay them a great deal of money each month. Turns out the leachers had already paid them to do just that. If I agreed to pay more money than they did, Yelp would remove their ad from our result page, and I could even pick a competitor whose response page I could leach on.

Can you imagine? I kicked them out.

This is an abhorrent business practice. It may well be technically legal, due to the sorry state of business practice oversite, but it is not morally justified by a company that promotes itself as a democratic egalitarian voice of the people.

The idea of Yelp is glorious, and democratic, and so appealing. But like American democracy, it has become a system that players like Yelp mine for their own profit. I know Yelp had to look for revenue sources, it was never a charity/public service concern. But buying better exposure by paying money to yelp to piggyback off businesses that have worked hard and long to EARN their 5 star reviews is wrong on the face of it, and can’t be justified.

Yelp has revealed itself as a hypocrite and greedy, morally challenged company.

Is it still a useful service? Probably yes. Despite Yelp’s despicable attempt to strong arm hard working and sucessful businesses to protect the value of good ratings, the basic idea is sound and useful.

My greatest hope is that a new start-up recognizes the opening Yelp’s misstep announces, and steps in to realize again the original, wonderful concept that was Yelp.

Read the reviews, I still do. But don’t be fooled. Yelp’s ego and profit motive is between you and the truth.

Yelp review written by Barry H. in San Diego: The initial concept was good but the site is being abused by businesses trying to hurt their competitors by writing patently untrue reviews using fake accounts. In response, Yelp seems to have gone overboard in singling out reviews they feel are in violation of terms of service.

I am a member of a 90 business networking group. I’ve done business with about 15 of them and have reviewed 8 of the ones I actually use. Yelp threatened to ban me from the site unless I removed those reviews because of a POTENTIAL conflict of interest. TAKE HEED all you Yelpers out there lest you review a friend you have done business with and get banned from the site.

I am a physician-no secret here. Now Yelp has removed any and all reviews I wrote on physicians. POTENTIAL conflict of interest again!! Trouble is that one of those physicians operated on my daughter and we arent even on the staff at the same hospitals so I have no conflic greater than any of you out there.

I understand what they are trying to do but their draconian tactics are rapidly making the site useless for me. I am only able to write this as an update to a review I wrote last year because INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH you can no longer simply review Yelp itself. Try to and see. You can review yelp events or yelpers but not the organization . Coincidence? I think not. Big Brother is watching you!!!!

This site has dubious integrity. I’ve spoken to many business owners who refused an advertising package with Yelp, then Yelp suddenly removed all of their positive reviews, claiming they were “fraudulent.” There is no doubt a lot of manipulation in reviews done by the Yelp staff based on those who do, or do not, advertise on this site.

And half the reviews here can be summed up as “omg, I came here for the first time in a group of 20 and had bad service, i’ll never go back.” Which is beyond useless, when you come big group and only try an establishment once, your chances of everything going smoothly approach nil.

YELP NEWS:

* Wired: Yelp Class Action Lawsuit (Feb 24, 2010)
* East Bay Express: Yelp and the Business of Extortion (Feb 18, 2009)
* New York Times: Google Said to Be Near a Yelp Deal (Dec 19, 2009)
* Seattle PI: Google May Buy Yelp; Because of Microsoft? (Dec 18, 2009)
* TechCrunch: Google in Discussions to Buy Yelp for Half a Billion Dollars or More (Dec 17, 2009)
* Scobleizer: Google Eating Yelp? (Dec 17, 2009)
* NY Times: Review Site Draws Grumbles From Merchants and Users (Mar 2, 2009)
* Yelp CEO Response to San Francisco Chronicle Letter (Jan 18, 2009)
* San Francisco Chronicle: Merchants Angry Over Getting Yanked by Yelp (Jul 4, 2008)

YELP REPUTATION:

* Yelp BBB Rating
* Is Yelp a Scam?
* Reviews of Yelp at Yelp
* Complaints Board Yelp Complaints page

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• Long Beach Business Sues Yelp, Claims Site Runs ‘extortion scheme’ (laist.com)
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• Yelp CEO Denies Extortion Scheme (mashable.com)
• Real People. Real Reviews. Real Extortion Scheme? (blogs.wsj.com)
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• Yelp Reviews: The CRAZIEST Things Reviewed On The Site (PHOTOS) (huffingtonpost.com)
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• Don’t fear the Yelper (trueslant.com)
• Yelp Is Sued After Dispute Over a Review (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)

Originally submitted at O’Reilly

The social web provides businesses with a largely untapped marketing channel for products and services — the trick is knowing how to take advantage of it. With this book, you'll understand how social web technologies work, and learn the most practical and effective ways to reach the people who…

The New Community Rules

Highly recommended; I use it regularly.

Pros: Easy to understand, Helpful examples, Well-written, Accurate, Concise

Best Uses: Intermediate, Student, Expert, Novice

Describe Yourself: Social Media Marketer, Business Strategist

Buy this book as a great overview of the major social networks and how to monitor your brand; keep it close as a reference resource.

This book is one of a handful that I keep right next to my computer and use frequently. I review it before visiting Social Media Networks I don’t regularly use to ensure I remember how to maximize my effectiveness and avoid mistakes.

I also use it to answer questions in my blog and on forums and Social Network communities and recommend it regularly. If you could only read one book about how Social Networking can benefit you and your business this is the one I would buy.

(legalese)

Do Follow Blogs - Click for image credit

Time is our most precious resource. All bloggers and business owners wish they had more of it and continually seek ways to accomplish more each day.

KeywordLuv and CommentLuv are effective ways to make every comment we write or receive provide far more benefits.

I strongly recommend bloggers join the do follow movement and install the CommentLuv and KeywordLuv plugins.

We and many of our favorite bloggers are focusing more and more of our time and efforts exclusively in dofollow blogs. The CommentLuv community is especially strong and readers can easily see CommentLuv featured posts.

They may not be aware that installing CommentLuv and registering your site allows you to suggest one of your last ten posts. Andy has already acted on a suggestion I made to allow you to select your most important posts instead and he has even added the ability to select your own anchor text for that post! Used wisely, that new feature can allow you to get ranked in the search engines for your most important keyword phrases.

The benefits of using KeywordLuv are not as obvious to many so I want to spell them out and explain exactly why I so strongly recommend using it. First you need to clearly understand what anchor text is and why it is so important to you.

Anchor text is simply the words used in the actual link that tell the search engines what the page the link points to is about.

Many bloggers are NOT using anchor text effectively or do not even know what phrases are important to them. There is nothing more important to your getting more traffic from the search engines than clearly targeting your best anchor text. Read my building traffic post for how to do this.

BENEFITS OF KEYWORDLUV:

1. Most bloggers and blog readers dislike keywords in the name field instead of a name. The reason commentators do that is because without KeywordLuv whatever is in the Name field is what is used as anchor text – and that is NOT effective. Installing KeywordLuv fixes that issue by allowing commentators to separate their name from the keywords.
2. KeywordLuv allows business owners and bloggers to select their own anchor text and pair it with the most targeted landing page.
3. Bloggers can more clearly understand what their commentators do and what their major interests are based on the keywords they use.
4. When we blog about our regular commentators we can use the anchor text and links they shared to ensure we are providing them with maximum benefits.

KeywordLuv allows us all to combine commenting and SEO efforts so that we can interact more frequently, strengthen our blogging community relationships and make our sites easier to find in the search engines which will increase our traffic, subscribers and potentially our incomes.

HOW TO USE KEYWORDLUV:

KeywordLuv is simple to use. Instead of putting your name or keywords into the Name field of a comment, use YourName @ Your Keywords.

Here are some examples so everyone is clear on the idea:

• Adam @ Merchant Affiliate Program Manager or Adam @ OPM
• Gail @ Social Media Marketing or Gail @ Business Blogging
• Pete @ Gift Affiliate Program
• Michelle @ Poster Printing
• Jeff @ Wedding Affiliate Program

Notice that only the keyword phrase is linked and that is exactly what your comment name field will look like too. You can vary the anchor text you choose.

For maximum benefit choose specific pages or posts optimized for each phrase and link that specific page/post to that specific keyword phrase.

You will not end up with enough incoming links to any one page if you do not send specific keyword phrases to specific pages/posts.

You can maximize the effectiveness of what you write by optimizing a page specifically for each keyword phrase – especially if you are offering services or products.

That involves good timing in blogs using CommentLuv so read on for how to change your landing page to match your keyword phrase. When you register your site at CommentLuv you entered your URL.

For CommentLuv to work you must enter it into the URL field EXACTLY as you registered it including using or not using the www and including or not including the trailing slash / at the end. You may want to copy and paste it somewhere so you can paste it back in later.

If you don’t see your last ten posts in CommentLuv the most likely cause is the URL you entered is not exactly how you registered it.

To link your selected anchor text to a page different than the one you registered with CommentLuv, fill in your comment as usual, select the CommentLuv post you wish to feature and then do this:

Just before you submit the comment, paste the URL of your preferred post/page into the URL field and immediately submit the comment.

It takes CommentLuv some time to realize the URL field has changed. If you forget or take too long you will lose the CommentLuv featured post you selected.

If that happens just paste your registered URL back into the Website URL field and click into the body of the comment. That will prompt CommentLuv to find your last ten posts again. Select the one you want, and then change the URL again and immediately submit the comment.

By installing KeywordLuv you allow business and blog owners to help themselves to generate more traffic and more sales.

Some will notice that I keep comments most bloggers would summarily delete. I do this because I know that businesses are in dire economic condition and it is essential that small and online businesses survive and even thrive in spite of the current economic climate.

I encourage my fellow bloggers to be forgiving of those who are new and haven’t learned to write excellent comments yet. Is it not better to educate them and even the offshore SEO companies they hire so they can call learn?

Many businesses do not have the time or skills needed to leave their own comments and may not know the difference between spam and adding to the conversation. We can educate them and make the world a better place.

For those bloggers willing to do more I ask that you participate in my new BizLuv MEME and find out how you can Support Your Favorite Businesses and benefit your own blog at the same time.

Note that not all blogs using CommentLuv or KeywordLuv are Do Follow.

I suspect that many assume they are and I personally find it disingenuous to use  these plugins that are so connected to the dofollow community and make them nofollow. For this reason I choose not to include nofollowed KeywordLuv sites in my KeywordLuv Twitter List.

CommentLuv blogs are included on my DoFollow Twitter List. Would anyone prefer that I create a DoFollow CommentLuv List?

WHERE TO GET THE PLUGINS:

• KeywordLuv plugin – I claimed @KeywordLuv to make the KeywordLuv plugin and this information post easy to find
• CommentLuv plugin | How to use CommentLuv with IntenseDebate
• How to tell if your Theme is compatible and how to use KeywordLuv compatibility mode if it isn’t.

I am currently compiling lists of Keyword Love enabled blogs, keywordluv lists and will add keyword luv tools if I find any.

Why should you link to bloggers who use KeywordLuv? Because they understand the importance of anchor text and are highly likely to add high quality links to your sites!

KEYWORDLUV LISTS:

• Dofollow.info Do follow blogs tagged as having KeywordLuv installed
• BlogAbout Everything KeywordLuv list (Updated Feb 12, 2010)

Please leave links to any additional Keyword Luv lists or tools you know of in the comments of this post. Thank you.

KEYWORD LUV BLOGS BY NICHE:

Use these lists to find KeywordLuv enabled blogs in your niche. I highly recommend going beyond exchanging comments to linking to and writing about each other’s sites.

Anchor text is so very important that if you appear in the list below I will edit yours on request. Just leave a comment in this post.

COMPUTER FINANCING:

Computer Financing Today – I thought some of my readers might be interested to know that Creative_Ace’s dofollow blog offers 5.99% computer financing with no credit checks. CJ is working on getting KeywordLuv working as I type this.

BLOGGING:

BloggerLuv (Twitter) Blog Collaboration
Kikolani (Twitter) The Art of Blogging for Blogging Tips and Social Media Marketing
Tycoon Blogger (Twitter) Blogging Tips
Andrew Rondeau (Twitter) How to Build a Blog Download your free blogging guide
Nice Blogger (BituMihau) Blogging Best Practices
Another Blogger (AnotherBlogger) Blogging Tips including How to Import Blogger Blogs to WordPress
Pot Politics (JSinKeyWest) Blogging Tips and Everything Else

INTERNET MARKETING:

GrowMap – this site
Don Power’s Local Business Internet Marketing and Local Social Media Marketing
Dennis Edell Direct Sales Marketing
I Do Web Marketing
Extreme John (Twitter) Business Reviews and Blogging Tips
Internet Marketing for Mommies (momtohanna) Making Money with Squidoo Lens – Get a Squidoo Lens Review
AriWriter Online Media Strategies (Ari Herzog) Why Ari Supports Dofollow, KeywordLuv and CommentLuv

AFFILIATE MARKETING:

AffiliateXFiles (Twitter) Affiliate Marketing Advice

WEB DEVELOPMENT:

Activo Web Development Blog team of Web Designers dedicated to KeywordLuv

DOFOLLOW LISTS:

Blog about Do Follow Blogs

FREELANCE WRITERS and PRODUCT REVIEWERS:

Moomettes Magnificents (Twitter) Product Reviews | Add Your Contests and Giveaways
Creative Ace (Creative_Ace) Freelance Writing and Online Technical Writing

VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS:

Social Media Virtual Assistant (Twitter) Offering Social Media Marketing Services

HOME IMPROVEMENT / REAL ESTATE:

Good Millwork Architectural Moldings including Crown Moldings, Baseboards and Chair Rail and Exterior Shutters, Wood Siding and other Millwork. They have access to rare woods including cypress and genuine mahogany and manufacture mahogany moldings, door and window trim.

Tampa Florida Real Estate Blog (DannyinTampa)
Gulf Coast Beach Team Alabama Gulf Coast Real Estate (GulfShoresLife)
Las Vegas Real Estate
Visit the Tulsa Real Estate Blog for Tulsa Oklahoma Homes for Sale
New Homes Section New Home Builder Ads
Team Aguilar San Diego Real Estate (TeamAguilar)
Commercial Real Estate Underground (CREUnderground)

WEDDINGS and GIFTS:

ExecGiftsBlog Associated with Executive Gift Shoppe’s Personalized Gifts Store and featuring a Wedding Store
Valentine’s Day Chocolate Truffles and Chocolate Do Follow Blog with CommentLuv and KeywordLuv

GOLF:

NoBogies Golf Blog and Golf Store with comprehensive posts on the Rules of Golf
Putting Mat Improving Your Golf Putting Confirmed Do Follow CommentLuv KeywordLuv

MUSIC:

Remergence Rembeatz Electronica Duo (JJ_Remergence) and (Rembeatz)
Blazing Minds Music Blog (BlazingMinds)

TECHNOLOGY, HARDWARE, SOFTWARE:

Software Critics Software Reviews (MathDelane)

GENERAL:

Known dofollow KeywordLuv enabled blogs in all other niches (more sections to be added as needed):

Best Wine Club
CommentDrop

The Blog About Everything | KeywordLuv list (Updated Feb 12, 2010)

Know of a Do Follow KeywordLuv blog missing from the above list? Let me know in the comments. If it is yours please also include your best anchor text phrases and landing pages and fill in the Twitter field too.

Posts like this take an extremely long time to compile and create. There are many more KeywordLuv enabled blogs to be added from Kikolani’s Dofollow.info Do follow blogs tagged as having KeywordLuv installed and to be found by searching.

We collectively need to decide on the best solution for compiling KeywordLuv blogs by niche. Please volunteer or leave suggestions in the comments. Thank you.

I am asking my readers to contribute to this project by adding your favorite KeywordLuv enabled blogs in the comments of this post. Please provide desired anchor text and landing pages.

As time allows I WILL move them into the body of this post to provide you with stronger editorial links.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How to Research Keywords for Your Business Blog (wordsellinc.com)
• How to Make an SEO Friendly Editorial Calendar for Your Blog (wordsellinc.com)
• What if link requests were honest? (wiep.net)
• How to select good keywords for niche blogs (aaronchua.com)
• Will Blog Comments Increase My Traffic and Page Rank? (imonlineguide.com)
• Keyword Targeting: How to Employ Multiple Keywords for SEO & Conversions (mt-soft.com.ar)
• CommentLuv Enanced Search Functionality (howtospoter.com)
• The Linkbuilding Value of Blogs in B2B (wordsellinc.com)
• Effective Anchor Text To Improve Rankings (lazerpromotions.com)
• Web Traffic Tips: Blog Commenting (internetmarketingformommies.com)
• Five Areas to Focus On for Effective SEO Copywriting (copyblogger.com)

Wedding Affiliate Program

I recently wrote a comment strongly recommending the Bridaluxe Wedding Affiliate Program in reply to this question from JBird85 in the WAHM forum:

“I was looking for different programs for people in the wedding niche and I came across a network called Bridaluxe.
Has anybody here used them, and is it a good (legit ) program?”

Hoping to be helpful, ampris2000, who has an online gaming fun site, replied “just type bridaluxe scam in google and see what shows up”

While it is obvious TO ME that she didn’t mean to imply Bridaluxe was a scam, I was concerned others might not realize she was offering generic advice not specific to them.

I realized what I wrote in my comment is a perfect description to share with my readers about why I recommend Bridaluxe. Here is the comment:

I highly recommend the Bridaluxe niche Wedding Affiliate Program and assure you it is definitely not a scam. It is one of the very best affiliate networks and for any wedding site it is as good as using Commission Junction and ShareASale (considered one of the cleanest affiliate networks) and better for wedding related sites.

You can add one line of javascript code to any site and instantly have a Wedding Store complete with products from all of their merchants (without having to apply to a single one!) – and that store is automatically updated with daily specials.

On top of that Bridaluxe stores will convert better than manually created sites because they have an algorithm that rearranges the products being offered based on what is currently selling best. If something gets media buzz and becomes hot your store will automatically have that product in prime position for maximum sales.

Their stores are far superior to Amazon stores especially in this case. I manage one site that has a Bridaluxe store and am the advisor to another that has an Amazon store. There is no comparison. If you operate in the wedding niche definitely go with Bridaluxe.

Bridaluxe collects your commissions for you and pays you directly the same way Commission Junction and other affiliate networks do. I have never heard a single complaint of them not paying their affiliates on time – and I recommend them regularly in my own blog.

There are a couple of points I forgot to include in that comment. One is that Bridaluxe has the longest cookie duration of any affiliate program I have ever seen. They use 365 day cookies. That makes sense if you consider that many plan weddings over a very long period of time.

They also have tiered commissions that are very beneficial to the affiliates while less so to the merchants in that affiliates are rewarded with higher commissions for combined sales from all merchants. I encourage affiliate publishers to read more about the benefits of joining Bridaluxe.

Both merchants and affiliates should know that Bridaluxe runs a clean affiliate program free of toolbar publishers, parasites, cookie stuffers, coupon scrapers, or any other bad players.

Merchants selling wedding related products should consider Bridaluxe because of their innovative stores that automatically feature hot selling products and their willingness to personally train affiliates for you in their use.

They can provide instant visibility for merchants on many prominent wedding related sites and dozens if not hundreds of blogs. See details on their merchant wedding affiliate program.

P.S. If JBird85 had any information in their profile they would be linked in this post (and if they let me know I will still do that for them).

Bridaluxe is such a great idea for bloggers that I sincerely hope they will license their solution to create stores for other niche affiliate programs.

WEDDING AFFILIATE PROGRAM RECOMMENDATIONS:

• Derek Semmler (Twitter) How the Bridaluxe Wedding Affiliate Program Hits the Affiliate Network Nail on the Head
• Weddex (Twitter) Bridaluxe: Wedding Affiliate Program for Wedding Pros
• GrowMap (Twitter) How to Evaluate a Gift Affiliate Program
• ExecGiftsBlog (ExecGifts) Executive Gift Shoppe Gift Affiliate Program

AFFILIATE MARKETING for AFFILIATES:

• Derek Semmler (Twitter) Case Study: Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing
• AffiliateXFiles (Ron Cripps) How to Become an Affiliate Marketer
• AffiliateXFiles (Ron Cripps) How to Create a Product Review Site That Sells
• Derek Semmler (Twitter) Building Affiliate Stores
• Adam Riemer (Rollerblader) How to Pick Merchants to Promote
• Derek Semmler (Twitter)How to Add Affiliate Products to Your Site
• AffiliateXFiles (Ron Cripps) Affiliate Marketing Tips For Long Term Results

• AffiliateXFiles (Ron Cripps) Affiliate Marketing FAQs – Ask your questions here and get answers from successful affiliate with 9+ years experience

AFFILIATE MARKETING FOR MERCHANTS:

• Murray Newlands (Twitter) Affiliate Marketing for Merchants
• Adam Riemer (Rollerblader) What You Should Expect from your Affiliate Management Company aka OPM
• Adam Riemer (Rollerblader) Common Mistakes When Hiring an Affiliate Manager
• Adam Riemer (Rollerblader) How to Select an Affiliate Management Company
• Adam Riemer (Rollerblader) How Small Businesses Can Compete for Affiliates
• Adam Riemer (Rollerblader) Why Merchants Should Offer Affiliate Commissions on Gift Certificates

Related articles by Zemanta

• Wedding Boom Predicted for Next 22 Years (growmap.com)
• How to Evaluate a Merchant Gift Affiliate Program (growmap.com)
• How to Attract Affiliates to Your Program (marketersdaily.com)
• The Way I See It: State of Affiliate Marketing Part 1 (revenews.com)

Image Credit: Smith College WPMU Award Nominated Blogs

For reasons I don’t completely understand, the obvious best Permalink URL format is not a default in WordPress. Many blogs have dates in the URLs or other extraneous words that make your URLs too long and hard to remember.

A clean URL should have only your domain (and possibly /blog or a subdomain) and then a SHORTENED post name which ideally would be your target keyword phrase.

You can easily change a setting in WordPress so that you your future posts will automatically have cleaner URLs.

WARNING: Changing this setting is retroactive and will change the permalinks to all existing posts. We recommend you first install Platinum SEO and then make the change because that plugin will automatically redirect all your existing links. That alone makes it a great plugin to use as the default WordPress behavior that changes your permalink if you change your post title can introduce permanlink changes you may not have intended.

How to change the WordPress Permalink default:

1. Log into your WordPress blog.
2. At the very bottom of the left column find Settings and click on it.
3. Click on Permalinks (under settings).
4. Select the radio button for Custom Structure and paste /%postname%/ into the box.
5. Click save changes.

Look for Permalink (just under your post title) when you write or edit posts or pages. WordPress will now automatically name your post YourDomain/the-name-of-the-post.

IMPORTANT: Click on Edit and shorten that name to your preferred page name, ideally your target keyword phrase and save it. You will end up with a post URL that looks like this: http://YourDomain.com/Your-Keyword-Phrase.

If you decide to change the title of the post WordPress will change your saved permalink and you will have to edit and save it again. Perhaps WordPress will give us an option to disable that behavior in the future (or maybe it already exists and someone will share it with me.

WordPress does make changes all the time. Have you noticed that (starting with version 2.9?) you can now convert posts to pages and pages to posts? That is a great idea I wish was available when I was first learning to use WordPress.

It is also why I am publishing this now. When you do a conversion you may have to know how to make this change if you want to be able to edit the names of your posts when converting them from pages.

OPTIMIZING PAGE URLS:

• NiceBlogger SEO Blog (NiceBlogger) Optimizing URLS: Top 5 Problems and Base Techniques
• EMarketing Matador Local SEO Information (eMatador): Local SEO For Local Niche and Small Businesses

Click the Bird to Tweet This

I am asking my fellow bloggers and Twitter users to do their part to support their favorite small and online businesses through the BizLuv MEME. Read more about why we all need to support each other and small businesses in BizLuv Meme.

Here is how you can participate:

TWITTER USER? Please Tweet This and share it on your other favorite Social Media and Bookmarking sites.

BLOGGER? Please Publish a Blog Post:

To make it easy you can use this template (or be creative and do your own thing).

1. Include a paragraph about what the BizLuv MEME is and why you support the idea. You can write your own or use the one below.
2. Include the business recommendation we share below. You can also include recommendations from other bloggers you read who are participating.
3. Tell us about a small or online business you use. Include why you recommend them and what products or services they offer that you personally buy.
4. If you know how, add anchor text and links for them. IMPORTANT: If you do not know how just copy and paste the URL to their Web site into your recommendation and I will do this for them and get a copy to you.
5. Ask your readers to participate in this MEME by Tweeting, blogging, and reviewing businesses they recommend.
6. Publish your post and leave a link to it in the comments of this post. Akismet may flag it as SPAM but I WILL rescue your comment.
7. If you have a business or blog please do this for your sites too. Don’t wait for someone else to do it. I am NOT opposed to self promotion. Success is challenging enough in good times and there is no time to waste!

HOW DOES THIS BENEFIT BUSINESSES and YOU?
It makes us all easier to find everywhere online!
More readers will learn about you and them.

Here is a sample post you can use. You can reblog it using Zemanta or copy and paste it into your blog:

1. START SAMPLE POST

We are doing our part to save small and online businesses being affected by the economic downturn and hope you will too. First we Tweeted This Post on how Twitter users and bloggers can support their favorite stores and service providers. Now we are sharing a business recommended by a dofollow blog that helps businesses to blog and get free Local Search Directory listings and adding a business we recommend.

2. INCLUDE ALL OR PART OF OUR RECOMMENDATION BELOW -  Feel free to paraphrase or use only the part that interests you most:

Businesses related to real estate and construction are among those hit the hardest. GrowMap recommends Good Millwork, a florida millwork company, as an excellent role model for traditional businesses on how to use the Internet to be of service to more people.

They support building green by manufacturing exterior shutters, deck materials and fire-rated wood siding from the very ecofriendly TimberSIL wood. TimberSIL is an amazing product that is virtually fireproof, insect-proof and rot-proof. It is so green it qualifies for up to 14 LEED credits and is so rot-proof that products made from it have a 40 year transferable no-rot warranty.

The will also mill any of their products using reclaimed lumber including the rare deadhead sinker cypress and lumber from old barns and buildings. They have sources for old growth salvaged lumber and you can even use your own customer supplied lumber. They are also one of the few mills that has access to genuine mahogany and manufactures mahogany moldings.

Good Millwork supports the efforts of other businesses. Both of their blogs are 100% dofollow and use CommentLuv and KeywordLuv and they are very active on Social Networks including Twitter and StumbleUpon where they review and share quality content to benefit us all.

They had a search tool built to make it easy for you or your installer to search through 10,000 architectural moldings including crown moldings, baseboards, chair rail and cabinet moldings and offer it for free. Architects can use their free downloadable 3D CAD drawings to more quickly create architectural drawings. Contractors can use those drawings to quickly and easily order all the materials required. That will save them time and money and in turn save the home-owner time and money.

They go out of their way to share how-to information in posts like their popular How to Install Crown Molding Like a Pro. If you have friends who do their own home improvements or home repairs, Good Millwork will answer their questions and find less expensive options so they can find more work and save money on their home improvement projects.

We recommend Good Millwork because they go out of their way to share what they know, assist other businesses, and provide excellent service.

3. ADD YOUR RECOMMENDED BUSINESS:

Tell us about a small or online business you use. Include why you recommend them and what products or services they offer that you personally buy.

This can be as short or long as you wish. Imagine you are telling your best friend about them and share with us what you would say to them in person.

4. Add anchor text and links to their site and directly to the products and services you recommended. If they don’t have a site link to any listing about their business you can find.

[IMPORTANT: If you don't know how to add links or use anchor text just publish what you know how to do and I will add the links for you and share your recommendation in this blog and elsewhere.]

5. CLOSE YOUR POST:

In your own words, ask your readers to participate in this MEME by Tweeting, blogging, and reviewing businesses they recommend.

6. SHARE YOUR POST HERE: Leave a comment in this post and include a link to your post either as the CommentLuv featured post (if you use CommentLuv) or in the body of the comment. If you know how to use anchor text go ahead. If you don’t just paste the link. All links are do follow.

Akismet may flag your comment as SPAM but I WILL rescue it. 

I will personally make sure that your blog and the businesses you recommend receive links with appropriate anchor text in many blogs.

There is no limit to how many businesses you can recommend. It doesn’t matter if you put them all in one post or write multiple posts.

Leave all the links in the comments of this post so I can easily find and republish them & include BizLuv in your Tweets and tags.

Thank you in advance for supporting this very important MEME. Find out who else is participating by using this Twitter Search.

If you don’t clearly understand what I am proposing or don’t know how and need assistance please ask me. Contact @GrowMap on Twitter (send me an @ message if you want to DM me), FriendFeed, StumbleUpon or leave a comment in this post or use my contact form to email me.

Related articles by Zemanta

• MEME: LinkLuv in Support of Small Businesses (growmap.com) Read this post for more on how to support your favorite businesses.

Great Depression Soup Line

Tweet This Post!

Even if the economy is not directly impacting you or your family, it will do so indirectly.

Each person who reduces their spending for any reason will cause the businesses you use regularly to have lower sales.

Declining sales may cause these businesses to lay off employees. As more people are laid off the ripple affect could cause even exceptional businesses you love to fail.

Are you visiting your favorite restaurants, shops and service providers as often and spending as much as you once did? Are they still thriving?

There are simple actions each of us can do to support your favorite businesses. One easy way to thank them and send them new customers is to add a review for them at one or more of these sites:

• Yahoo! Local – If you have a Yahoo ID simply enter a location and the name of a business and click Write a Review
• Google Maps – If you have a Google Account simply enter the name of a business and where they are and click Write a Review
• MyLocalLookup – Simply search for any business and click Rate It. You don’t even need an account. Businesses can get a free MyLocalLookup listing.
• Yelp is a community oriented around specific locations. It is a great way to find out which businesses others in your geographic area prefer. Sign up for a Yelp account to read and leave reviews of local businesses and receive discounts and coupons. Businesses should strongly consider getting a Free Yelp business account and reviewing other businesses they use.
• Merchant Circle is another geo-targeted community where neighbors share their opinions of the businesses they use, see special offers, discounts and coupons. Businesses can get a free MerchantCircle listing and consumers can save time and money using the new MerchantCircle Neighbors and Q&A programs.

Every business should have a listing in each of these sites. The easy way is to use the Universal Business Local Search Listing service.

If you are willing to write a review for any business and can not find them on the above sites share this information and link with them. You may be instrumental in keeping them in business. Encourage them to either use that service or at least manually add their business to the above five sites so you can review them and they can be found online.

If you are a business planning to review other businesses be sure to read How to Write a Review and How NOT to Write a Review. While those posts were specifically about Merchant Circle, the advice they contain applies to any site that accepts reviews. Note that some sites prohibit soliciting or incentivizing reviews so be sure to read their Terms of Service carefully.

Many traditional offline businesses will not understand the importance of being easy to find in digital local directories.

Even people who have no computer are looking for you online and you really need to be easy to locate. Let me share a couple examples of why this is so very important.

• Your loyal customer with a GPS (standard in many cars today and popular as a handheld device) decides to call to see how late you are open or whether you take a particular credit card. They can’t find you so they don’t know if you will be closed – but they DO find a coupon for a competitor they never knew about before. You may have just lost a customer.
• Most of your customers have cell phones now. Did you know they can use a cell phone to look for you from anywhere? When is the last time you saw a pay phone booth with a printed copy of the yellow pages anywhere? If they can’t find your phone number they WILL find other special offers from other businesses. How many more customers can you afford to lose and stay in business?

Tamar's StumbleUpon Avatar

If you use Social Networking sites like Twitter, FriendFeed,StumbleUpon, Facebook, Reddit or any others you can recommend your favorite businesses online.

I highly recommend first reading Tamar Weinberg’s Social Media Handbook.

Business Owners should read her book The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web.

Facebook is the most challenging to figure out of all the Social Networking sites so I would not even think of using it without first reading Jesse Stay’s and Jason Alba’s I’m on Facebook; Now What? How to Get Business and Professional Value From Facebook.

Wondering how you can Promote Blogs and Businesses Online?

Review their content, Tweet about them, go out of your way to share when others ask for recommendations – each of these actions may seem small but can make all the difference.

Do only share what you believe in and what others will find interesting.

I am a huge proponent for small businesses and in this economy many can really use our help. I am asking that bloggers join me in a new Meme.

I propose that we each blog about our favorite small businesses and give them linkluv with the best possible anchor text to make them easy to find.

We can publish each others’ efforts and even organize them by niche and make more comprehensive posts available as guest posts. Don’t worry about all that for now.

Do your favorite businesses a favor – publish a post about them.

Downturns in the housing industry, residential and commercial construction, and real estate have been particularly severe so remember any friends, family or businesses you work with that operate in those areas.

As spending is reduced, businesses must become more visible and attract leads and sales from a larger geographic area.

Good Millwork Avatar

Good Millwork is an excellent role model for traditional businesses for how to use the Internet and Social Media to expand their market.

They installed two SEO optimized WordPress blogs using the Thesis Theme that are highly interactive blogs with threaded comments.

Both of their blogs are 100% dofollow and have CommentLuv and KeywordLuv installed which allows other businesses and bloggers to benefit from reading and commenting in them.

KeywordLuv allows you to select what keyword phrase is linked to your site. Many consider this the most important factor in getting better search engine positions. Where your site ranks in the search engines determines how much traffic your site receives.

By supporting high quality small businesses like Good Millwork you can benefit your own business and make you both easy to find online. Visit their sites. Blog about them and be sure to link the words that are most beneficial.

Here are some examples so you understand the concept.

• Architects would  want to know that they can use the architectural molding search tool to choose from over 10,000 molding profiles and download approved 3D CAD drawings which can be downloaded absolutely free for architectural drawings.
• Contractors, Real Estate and Home Improvement sites might be interested to know they manufacture architectural moldings including crown molding, baseboards, chair rail and cabinet moldings from over 200 types of wood including real mahogany and deadhead sinker cypress. They are one of the few mills with access to genuine mahogany manufacturing mahogany moldings.
• Green builders and those interested in the environment could feature their ecofriendly TimberSIL products including exterior shutters and fire-rated wood siding. TimberSIL qualifies for up to 14 LEED credits. They also custom mill reclaimed lumber and customer supplied lumber.
• If you love do it yourself projects look for their how-to posts such as How to Install Crown Molding Like a Pro.

I included these examples so you could clearly see what proper anchor text usage looks like.

Notice that I did NOT link to the names of their blogs.

If you are searching for the name you already know about their site. We want to help Internet users who don’t know the name of his or your business find them.

Notice that I DID link to the best keyword phrases for each product or the phrase someone seeking specific information would type into a search engine.

I even shortened the link to How to Install Crown Molding Like a Pro to include only the strongest part of that phrase.

I also hope to encourage other bloggers to add some or all of these links to your site to benefit this fine business.

Why would a blogger want to do that for a business they don’t know? I have introduced you so now you do know them. Here are some reasons why I believe collaborating with Good Millwork and Good Moldings will benefit your blog or business:

1. They are providing you a way to leave comments that benefit your blog, or any business that wants to interact with them, or even to allow Search Engine Marketing companies to benefit their client’s businesses. (We recognize that not all business owners have the time to manage their own commenting and Social Networking.)
2. Good Millwork and Good Moldings are very active on Social Networks including Twitter (GoodMillwork, Moldings, CrownMoldings, MoldingDesign, ReclaimedWood), StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, Facebook and Delicious.

I’ve even made it easy by making each paragraph and this entire post easy to reblog using the Zemanta browser plugin. If you don’t use Zemanta contact me or @GrowMap at Twitter and I can email the html for the entire post or any particular section.

I will even work for free one-on-one with anyone who needs assistance with keyword research, using anchor text or reblogging.

Like this blog, Good Millwork and Good Moldings believe in paying it forward. We are all happy to publish guest posts and add links for deserving businesses, blogs and non-profits to posts we write.

If you include any links for Good Millwork on your site or share content for them on Social Networks, please leave a comment in this post or contact us on Twitter, FriendFeed or StumbleUpon or use our contact form to let us know. We WILL go out of our way to return the favor.

GUEST POSTS:

• List your blog and find blogs in your niche using MyBlogGuest created by SEOSmarty SEO Consulting Services Blog – (Twitter)
• Use Unique Article Wizard (UAW) to generate and distribute unique articles to hundreds of article directories and blogs. See the trackbacks on this Crown Molding post to evaluate the quality.
• Automatically generate a unique version of that Crown Molding related article. (Click the link, then copy and paste a unique version of that article.)

We will be writing posts about MyBlogGuest and UAW with more information on these exceptional finds. They are both fairly new and their instructions are not always clear. The UAW system will become easier to use as they continue to improve it, but still complex because it is so powerful. Help spread the word by Tweeting This Post!

Help spread the word – Tweet This Post!

Use This TweepML link to easily follow Twitter accounts mentioned in this post

Want to participate but need something easier? See the BizLuv MEME template.

REAL ESTATE ECONOMIC STATUS:

• StreetWise - (Twitter) – The Real Estate Industry Should Not Get Too Excited About 4Q09 GDP Growth (Jan 31, 2010)
• YourHome.CA (Canada) – Real Estate Marketing Gurus See ‘Cautious Optimism’ for 2010 (Jan 30, 2010)
• REJournals – (Twitter) – U.S. to Follow Asia, Europe in Commercial Real Estate Recovery (Jan 19, 2010)
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Announces $2 Billion in Recovery Act Grants (Jan 14, 2010)
• Real Estate Industry News – (Twitter) – Commerical / Multifamily Real Estate Market Continues to Feel Effects of Economic Downturn (Jan 6, 2010)
• Tampa Florida Real Estate – (Twitter) – Tampa Market Update Jan 2010, Tampa to Receive HUD Economic Recovery Act Grant Money
• Alabama Real Estate – (Twitter) – Alabama Real Estate Sales in October 2009 show first positive year over year results since July 2007
• National Real Estate Investor – (Twitter) – Real Estate Downturn of the Early ’90s Differs From Today’s Crash in Important Ways (Nov 2, 2009)

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• Hyperlocal Business Directory MerchantCircle Signs Up Millionth Merchant (techcrunch.com)
• Yelp! Changing the Local Game Some More (ducttapemarketing.com)
• MerchantCircle Answers lets small businesses show off their expertise (digital.venturebeat.com)
• MerchantCircle enlists its millionth small business for online marketing help (venturebeat.com)
• Did You See Our Guest Post at Merchant Circle? (growmap.com)
• How to Turn More Visitors Into Buyers (guest post by growmap on MerchantCircle.com blog)