The digital land rush. Remember that?

It was like The Wild West as brand names and keywords were snatched-up. Many brands were caught with their pants down.

Then came usernames. Similar story.

Now, it’s locations. While admittedly different, you still need to act.

Have you claimed your business location pages? If you haven’t you need to.

Why?
• So you have control.
• Opportunity for further interaction with your customers.
• Optimize, customize and augment your listings or location pages.

Here Are 4 Ways to Take Control

Facebook Places:
On a personal level, I don’t like Facebook Places. Why? It seems very poorly planned, as if it was rolled out as a band-aid to take advantage of the increasing popularity of other check-in based services.

Also, there isn’t much in the form of quality control. If a user is impatient, as many of us are, it’s easy (too easy) to add another location. The result? The constant chasing, by business owners, of rogue locations.

Never the less, you can claim and brand your places pages. You will need to ensure that an email address associated with the business is also included as part of your personal profile. Then simply locate the “Is this your business?” link in the left and follow the bouncing ball.

Foursquare:
One of the geo-location leaders, the growth of Foursquare continues at a rapid pace. Finding fresh check-in data on usage isn’t easy. However, if the number of photos posted via Foursquare is any indication , you need to wrap your arms around it.

Claiming your location can be done quite easily, allowing you to add more information to the profile (“Venue”) and create check-in based offers.

To begin the process, simply find your business location and click the “Do you manage this venue? Claim here”.

Gowalla
Very similar to Foursquare, users check-in, can post photos, leave tips and more. By claiming your business location, you can build out the profile and create check-in messages which you can use to provide offers or a simple “thanks for checking in”.

The Gowalla claim process is quick and easy (perhaps too easy!). Simply locate your business, or add it, and click the “Do you run this place? Claim it now”, then once again follow the bouncing ball.

Yelp
By claiming your business on Yelp! you give yourself the opportunity to optimize the profile, add a great deal of information and respond to those leaving reviews.

It’s a bit more involved to claim, as you have to create a business account, however it’s worth the extra effort.

You can start by finding your location, then clicking the “Work Here…” link. Once claimed, add photos, and as much detailed information as you can.

What do you think are some other benefits to claiming your locations?

Own a small business and need a website? Join the club. Have a small budget? You aren’t alone.

While having a website is just one part of the digital marketing puzzle, it is a necessity. It serves as your home base. It allows people to find you, or at least takes the first step towards findability.

In the “old days”, if you wanted a website you had limited options:

• Build a crappy looking site on a free server like GeoCities
• Pay your cousins, neighbor’s nephew to build you a crappy looking site
• Spend a small fortune

Today, you have more options. Technology is changing at break-neck speed and more tools become available everyday that allow you to DIY. From video and photo editing, to whipping together a simplistic website.

While these do not present the best possible solution, they can at least help you begin down the digital marketing path.

• Weebly
• LifeYo
• WordPress, with tips for a self-hosted version

These tools have limitations. Everything that is too easy to be true, usually is. Here are a few tips, that will help you lay a foundation using these tools

• Take some time in selecting a domain name
• Unless it is an absolutely unavoidable situation use yourdomain.com
• Take advantage of every SEO (Search Engine Optimization) opportunity you can
• Keep your content fresh

Good luck in building a digital marketing home base.

The end of December. It’s that time of year to reflect on the things that have been.  And place hope in the things that could be.

Make your bold predictions. Tell us of the things you resolve to do. Would seem from the 7.8 million predictions and 7.1 million resolutions, most everyone else is.

Me, I have some personal goals I would like to meet. To get there, I’ve decided to focus simply on next steps. I have, in the past, fallen victim to focusing on the pie in the sky image (Hey! I like pie!).

In some cases that image seems to be a million miles away. Next steps help me get there bit by bit.

Instead of giving a list of what I think will (or should) happen, I have a couple questions for you.

Will this really be the year of mobile?
There’s been talk of “the year of mobile” for quite some time. It has to happen eventually. Right? Or has it?

What do you call yourself this year?
It’s like agency mad libs. Fill in the blank: Digital? Integrated? Content Marketing? Social? Search?

We all struggle with the naming conventions as overlap of disciplines has reached a high-point in, well, overlap. Fact is, to be successful online, you have to do a wide variety of things, both as a company and an individual.

It really doesn’t matter what term you use to describe yourself. Just do, what you do, well. Sage advice, I know.

Do you admit you don’t know the answer?
Personally, I hate admitting I don’t know something. Just ask my wife. I may sound somewhat like Fonzie issuing an apology, but I do it.

Over the years I have learned how important, and liberating, admitting not knowing something can be. Also, I have learned to distrust those that respond “I can do that easily” to every question. Which are you?

Learn as much as you can. The only way we can do that, is to admit we don’t know.

In case you didn’t know. Tonight, Lebron James returns to Cleveland.

Remember him? Mr. “I’m taking my talents to South Beach”. Suffice to say, things are not exactly going as planned in Miami. Clevelanders rejoice.

Tonight is sure to be a media spectacle. Be prepared for plenty of images of burning jerseys and signs ranging from gut-busting humor to unbeguiled hatred.

While I am a sports nut, the NBA is something I couldn’t care less about. However, the situation does present compelling drama, and an interesting parallel.

Is Google your Lebron? What happens when something you rely on is removed?

The Aftermath
Many downtown Cleveland bar and restaurant owners attribute the bulk of business to sporting events. Some citing as much as 70% of their revenue as a result. The reign of Lebron in Cleveland, meant sell-out games and plenty of foot traffic downtown. That ship, sailed.

This morning, ESPN aired a segment interviewing a local bar owner. The feedback on the current state of business, post-Lebron, was grim.

Businesses had become reliant upon the trickle-down impact of one entity. Lebron. He left. Now what?

Is Google Your Lebron?
Take a look at your analytics. Drill down a bit. What do you notice about your sources of traffic?

If you’re like many other businesses, Google is going to represent a significant portion of your top traffic sources.

Makes sense, right? When the name of a search engine has become a verb meaning “do an internet search”, it is telling.

What happens if Google were to disappear after tonight’s game? Say for example, Google decides to take their talents to, oh…I dunno, TV. Or selling books.

It’s hard to fathom (is it?), but it’s worth taking the time to ponder.

How would your business fare in a Google-less world?

Photo By: Keith Allison

How many of you have an online press room? The password protected, rarely updated, extension-of-a-brochure-ware website. Old school style. They should be named “Jump Through Hoops to Write About us Please. Thank You”.

Fact is, when I think of an online press room, that is what comes to mind. It’s antiquated.

In the world of digital, change is pervasive. Search algorithm updates, the emergence of social media tools like geo-location services. Change is everywhere, in perpetual motion.

It’s time for the online press room to change too. A social media newsroom can help with that. The concept was introduced by Todd Defren at PR Squared, and they have provided a template that anyone can use as a framework in building their own.

The social media newsroom offers a number of benefits to businesses and is another example of the continued blurring of lines between social media and PR (among other things).

Access
You want members of the media to write about you right?

In the past, traditional media-types would visit your online press room, request a password to view photos, select a few, you would burn them a disc and drop them in the mail to appear in an article two months from now. Timely right?

Not only has the timeliness of informational need changed, so has the media. You knew that though, right?

Fact is, bloggers are media too. The emergence and acceptance of “citizen journalism” means you need to make information available to them as well. A social media newsroom provides quick access to everyone.

Give Them What They Need
Provide all the information needed for the job. Compile research, links, whitepapers, reviews, media mentions and pertinent contact information among other things.

Organize the information by product, category etc. in an intuitive, easy to use manner. The easier you can make the job of the media, the better your chances of receiving coverage.

Brand Image
Provide images of your products, team members, logo or whatever else is appropriate. If a blogger is writing a post about your products, don’t make them search high and low for an image to use. Not only have you helped them do their job, you have ensured that the image isn’t something grabbed from a Google image search of low quality.

You know what would suck? An glowing media-mention about your product with a stretched, pixelated image.

Those are three simple reasons to create and maintain a social media newsroom. What do you see as the benefit?

What to Include
There is no exact recipe that will tell you everything to include. The great thing about using the framework provided by PR Squared, is you can simply add and remove elements that make sense for your business.

Think about the things media members in your market need and include them. My Suggestions?

Bookmarks
I love Delicious. There, I said it. Using Delicious bookmarks you can organize a wide variety of information by tag. Spend time planning and determining a tagging hierarchy that will make it easy to provide back-story and additional information in a very straight-forward, useful way.

As a simple example, there are links related to this post (from a presentation at Pubcon) here: http://www.delicious.com/patstrader/pubconpr.

RSS Feeds
If you have something to say and are publishing content, you need to make sure it is RSS enabled. Blogs, tweet streams, YouTube videos, Flickr streams, press releases. You get the idea.

Not only can you provide a clearly-labeled directory of feeds, you can parse them to display recent content from each feed. In a sidebar, you could have a list, linking to each feed, and in the body of the page, display last 10 Tweets, most recent videos and photos, blog headlines and more.

Make it Easy to Share
Is the content you are providing portable? For example, ensure it is easy to grab the code needed to embed a video.

Map Your Outposts
Literally taken, let people know where you are.

Imagine a blogger writing about your event or restaurant. Don’t make them do the legwork of finding directions or location information for their audience.

Additionally, provide links to your other social media outposts. Your Foursquare venue, or Facebook Fan Page for example. By providing links to these outposts, in conjunction with your RSS feed links, you are allowing the media to learn more about you and find additional sources of information which might be useful to them.

Display Your Media Mentions
Another adaptation of RSS feeds, you can multi-purpose your listening feeds, or use something as simple as Google News or Blog search.

Pull the feed, parse the information and display the most recent media mentions or blog posts about your brand or products. For the truly geektacular out there, you can do some creative things with Yahoo! Pipes and RSS Feeds.

Contact Information
If the media needs to contact you to complete their job, it needs to be painfully obvious who to contact and how.

For your media contacts, you can provide the preferred method of contact and the types of questions each person is best suited to answering. Using head shots, and LinkedIn profiles is another great way to provide additional information.

Leverage Your Assets
In these times of content-as-currency, you need to leverage your assets. Photos, videos, white papers, presentation slides or any other form of content you have created. Make it available.

Also, make it clear that the assets can be used by the media through use and display of a Creative Commons license. Again, anything you can do to make the media’s job easier and quicker to complete, the better.

This is just a simple overview of why and what to include if you are working on building a social media newsroom. There are many creative ways this could be implemented, what are some ideas you have?

One of the biggest determinants to social media success is time.

Many companies find themselves in a time-suck that limits participation and diminishes the velocity and quality of their social media efforts.

Lack of time creates frustration and eventually leads to abandonment. Here are three things which will help you save time and make the most of your social media efforts.

Hootsuite
Hootsuite allows you to monitor and post to a variety of social media outposts including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

With many features, including team participation, post scheduling, analytics and more, it is a great application sure to help you become more efficient.

Flickr Uploadr
Tired of uploading photos in small batches? You are using Flickr right?

Flickr Uploadr is an incredibly useful tool that allows bulk uploading to your Flickr account.

Create new sets, assign tags, image titles and more.

Tubemogul
It’s simple. Upload your video once to TubeMogul and use the tool to distribute to a wide variety of video site like Vimeo, YouTube, DailyMotion and more.

It still has some issue with uploading to Facebook fan pages, but can still save you countless hours of upload time.

What tools do you use to save time?

The ubiquity of fan pages has, to an extent, eroded their value. As more fan pages are created, more crap is published. It’s the law, apparently.

Those that have built and maintain quality fan pages will continue to reap the rewards for the foreseeable future. However, the value of poorly planned and executed fan pages will have an ever-decreasing value.

Why? Fan pages are easy to create, yet difficult to build-out. Anyone can create a fan page, haven’t you noticed?

6 Ways to Ensure Your Fan Page Will Suck

• Care More About the Number of Fans You Have Than the Value You Provide.

Quick, go count how often you ask your fans to pimp your page. Now go tally how often you provided something of value to your fans. Skewed towards the pimp? Suxor!

• Post in All Caps.

Your fans love this. Really they do. If your caps lock button happens to be broken, you can always step-up to the ever-popular “Multiple Exclamation Points” tactic. After all what you say is REALLY IMPORTANT!!!! Right?

• Never, and I Mean Never, Post Anything of Value.

Talk about how awesome you are, the recent awards you picked-up at the Elks Club Pancake Feed and several times a day ask your fans to solicit their friends to become your fan. Every day. Do this.

• Ignore People.

Know what else folks love? Being ignored. Seriously, what are these people thinking? They come to one of your communication outposts (your fan page) to ask questions? Caveat: Yes, some folks you should ignore (no joke), we describe these asshats in the next tip.

• Delete Anything Remotely Negative.

There are a ton of people out there that it would seem, hate themselves. Seems, they hate you too. How do they cope? They play the role of “Negative Nancy” all day on fan pages. Yours is next. Those people probably deserve to be ignored. However, those with legit complaints or issues need to be addressed. Don’t just delete comments because they are unfavorable.

• Allow (And Even ‘Like’) Spam.

Your fans LOVE spam. They slice it up and put it on saltines and dance to polka music. They love it. In fact someone just shared a great link about how they struck it rich working from home on an iphone. Also, when Maude’s Cheese Hut does a drive-by post reminding your fans to “Stop in for the best cheese curds!!!!!!!!!”, like it, and leave it for your fans to enjoy.

Jokes, and snark aside. If you are doing any of these things, please stop. You can create a quality page, encourage communication and provide value to your fans. It can be done, yet all to often the example being used as a good fan page, is a really bad one. So instead of pointing you to one, I simply encourage you to use common sense. Follow the 80/20 rule, provide value, interact and please, don’t be craptacular.

You have likely heard of all the new “check-in-here” social sites. They aren’t necessarily new, however, the launch of Facebook Places has opened the eyes of many to geo-location tools.

Facebook Places, Gowalla, Yelp!, Bright Kite and Loopt are all examples. Foursquare is included in that group and also incorporates game mechanics. Essentially, people check-in and earn badges for a variety of reasons.

You also have the opportunity to leave “tips” at various locations, including your own. It’s the digital way of giving the inside-scoop to visitors.

When you talk to someone that is heading to your favorite restaurant, and you tell them, “make sure you try the….”. It’s like that. Only digital.

A recent development with Foursquare makes it a very interesting tool for travel and tourism businesses. You can now embed tips, and to-do items, on your website.

If you own a restaurant, you can add a button to your site that visitors can click and add your location to their to-do list. If you are a CVB, DMO or other travel resource, you can leave a variety of tips for people to add to their list.

Here’s How You Can Embed Foursquare To-Do Items:

Get the Code:

• Find Your Venue:

Visit foursquare.com and do a search for your location to navigate to the “venue” page.

• Location or Tip?

Once there you can either embed the location or a tip as a to-do item.

• Grab the Code

You will notice buttons on either, which you can click to grab the necessary snippet of code. In the tip section, the button will appear in the bottom right corner, when you hover your cursor. When you click the button, a small window will pop up where you can select and copy the necessary code, which you will then paste into your webpage.

Make it Available to Visitors

• Simply Paste

If you know a little bit about your site code, find a suitable location on your website and simply paste it in. That’s it.

• Your Visitors Can Now Add It

Once added to your site, a button will appear, which your visitors may click, to add items to their own personal Foursquare account. This item will now be visible when they are out and about on their mobile device.

Seems like a great way to make your event or location known to travelers. What do you think?

Is The Marketing Digital Divide Widening?

There was a time when digital marketing gave small businesses and mom and pops an advantage. They could create a website making themselves more findable and in many ways help level the playing field with the “big boys”.

The efficient, assertive small businesses can still do this, however it is becoming more and more difficult and less and less the norm.

Things have changed.

Now, to stay on top you need to be active. Very active. This is also assuming you have a quality product, and offer solid customer service.

Content creation, social media participation as well as simply staying abreast of the latest trends are all required to be competitive online.

One of the key elements for a business to stay competitive is time. Devoting time to creating video, writing blog posts, interacting on Facebook and monitoring social channels is critical. However, time is something in which we have a limited supply.

The Evolution
For many small businesses there is but one marketing person. They have been under stress for quite some time, and are now under the gun more so than ever.

Years ago, the marketing person could oversee the development of a website, pay for search engine optimization services and essentially “be done”.

Many companies employing that strategy had great success. They were, in many cases, early adopters, and became leaders online as a simple by-product of early buy-in.  As their findability increased, their business increased.

Things Have Changed
That elusive findability has become much more difficult to pin down. Digital marketing is now a living, breathing thing. No longer a once a year project, it has now reached the point of being a daily, or more frequently, project.

The Rich Get Richer?
The ability to devote time and resources to digital marketing has a ceiling for small businesses. Know who has resources? And time? Yup, larger companies. Which leads me back to my question.

Are the rich getting richer?

Want to improve your online marketing? Of course you do. Who doesn’t?

Thing is, that is where most people get stuck. They want (need) to, but just don’t know how to get started.

Beware the Quick Fix
Pressure from a multitude of things from poor financials, to the boss breathing down their neck often leads to reactive decision making.   Something needs done…yesterday.

Quick fixes never work for me, digitally or otherwise. I don’t think I am alone in admitting I have certainly tried my fair share, despite being told time and time again, ‘if it looks too good to be true, it probably is’. Yet we often try to find ways to justify going against our better judgment in hopes of a fast solution. Why? Only Dr. Phil and the producers of fad diets know.

Ever notice that there are far more success stories which begin with “I worked hard” vs. “It was easy!”. It’s not a coincidence.

Indulge me for a moment with this metaphor. Think of your digital marketing, like fitness.

Who wouldn’t like to be fit? Or have a very strong web presence? How many times do you overhear conversations about either subject that contain statements including, “I wish I could”, “If I only had time”. I am personally on a mission to get back into shape. Am I there yet? No. But I have learned a lot to this point about diligence and effort.

Fact is, people don’t suddenly become fit, and brands don’t suddenly find themselves with a rock-solid online presence. Both are the result of proper planning, execution and hard work.

Make a Decision
It’s one thing to talk about wanting to do something. It’s something entirely different to make the firm decision to do it. Committing time, resources and creating the proper mindset are all necessary steps to achieve success.

Create a Plan
Walking into the gym without an idea of what you are wanting to do is never a good idea. It’s the same with your digital marketing. Simply showing up on Facebook is not a plan.

Think about goals, time-frames, and realistically evaluate the time which can be devoted to working towards those goals.

Lay the Foundation
Out of the gate you will not be able to simply tie on your shoes and complete a long, difficult workout. Think you can ride your mountain bike for 50 miles without some prep-work?  You might be able to, but without some foundation, it will hurt. A lot.

Digital efforts are no different. You will not become a thought leader in your field, nor earn the trust of your audience with just one tweet. Crafting a nice page title tag isn’t going to instantly send you to a number 1 ranking.

Work on the foundation. It will give you the opportunity to build and grow.

Work Smart
It takes effort. No way around it.

You can find tools to make yourself more efficient. Be it running shoes, a smooth shifting mountain bike or hootsuite and tweet deck, there are tools to help you. However, those tools are no substitute for effort.

Blood, sweat and tears is a tired euphemism, yet it is applicable. Be prepared to work if you would like to reap the rewards.

Measure & Track
There is no way to know how well you are performing, if you don’t know where you started. Measure everything you can and then determine which things really matter. Your key performance indicators (KPI’s) are going to be determined by your goals, not someone else’s.

If you are wanting to lose weight, step on the scale and keep note of your diet and exercise and compare. If you are wanting to build muscle would you worry so much about your weight? Probably not.

Be careful of chasing false-positives, or perceived positives. If you have 10,000 fans on Facebook, yet none of them are buying your product, does it really matter how many fans you have?

Don’t Overdo It
The first hints of success are sweet. They provide much needed encouragement and help us to keep moving down the path towards our goal. However, it is important to remember that it is a process, not an event, that will lead you to long-term success.

Going to the digital well too often, can stagnate a campaign, boring both yourself and your audience. Much the same with fitness, overtraining can cause setbacks and frustration.

While you may think that doing more is always better, it is the quality that matters.

Push Your Limits
If you continue to do the same things, you will continue to realize the same results.

Pushing your limits helps you grow, expand and improve.  Stepping outside your comfort zone can create unique opportunities and help you achieve successes that you might not have dreamed possible. Take calculated risks and lead.

What do you think?