The world is going mobile and you don’t want to be left behind.

Smartphones first started dominating laptops and PCs back in the fourth quarter of 2010. That was the first quarter that smartphones outsold laptops and PCs combined. Now this:

There are over 1 million more mobile devices activated every day across the world than there are babies born.

Wow!

I read that eye-opening statistic yesterday over at Copyblogger.

Is your small business ready for this Mobile Revolution?

Join me on Thursday, June 13, 2013 when I’ll be presenting Preparing Your Small Business For The Mobile Revolution at the Round Rock Chamber of Commerce.

In this session we will discuss mobile-responsive websites, location-based marketing and of course, local search, which includes your Google+ Local and Bing Business Portal listings.

IPG Search Marketing will be providing the drinks. You’ll bring your lunch, your business cards and a willingness to learn and grow your business.

This event is completely free but there is limited space so you must register to attend.

Register Here!

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We had the pleasure of updating the website for Christian Brothers Automotive, an auto repair center in Round Rock. This website not only looks good on a desktop computer, it’s mobile responsive so it looks great on a tablet or smartphone too!

One of the most important aspects of this website is that contact information be very prominent and show up at the top of the screen on mobile devices. Having all the contact information in the header ensures that the phone number is in the most prominent position when viewed on a mobile device. After all, more people are searching from their mobile phones than ever before.

In addition to the contact information being prominently displayed, the phone number is set up so you can tap to call and be instantly connected to the shop during normal business hours.

Check out the new Christian Brothers Automotive Round Rock Website today.

Wednesday, May 15th 2013 with Ken Partain.

Need help figuring out how to best use Google+ for your business? Then this session is for you. Google+ is now the core of everything Google. Having a presence on the platform and actually using it to promote your website, company and events now affects how well your website ranks in a Google search.

Google+ is also a tool for authentication. Google is attempting to authenticate every piece of content on the web and associate it with a real business or person. This helps keep down the spam and other low-quality content from their search results.

Join us as we dig into Google+ and learn how to use all of the new features to grow your business.

When
May 15th
12noon – 1:30pm

Where
Tech Ranch Austin
9111 Jollyville Rd
Austin, TX 78759

Cost
Free – but you must register with RISE

For More Information and To Register
https://www.riseglobal.org/sessions/detail/how-to-use-google-to-grow-your-business

More about the RISE Conference 2013
RISE is not your ordinary conference. Because RISE is free, decentralized, and crowd-sourced, the breakout sessions are organized by session hosts, each of whom chooses his/her own topic and session location.

These forums are limited to 25 participants and are led by established entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders, and service providers all over Austin. In addition to several hundred breakout sessions, RISE hosts special events for entrepreneurs including Keynotes, Fast Pitch Competitions, Funding Forum, Women’s Entrepreneur Lunch, and Entrepreneur Awards.

During the RISE conference, you’ll connect with entrepreneurs and startups from multiple sectors and levels, along with leaders from the investment community, corporate and small business, universities, nonprofits, and government. It’s a fun and highly educational ride, much like entrepreneurship itself.

Thursday May 9th, 2013 - Free Monthly Lecture by Ken Partain from IPG Search Marketing – Second Thursday of each month during 2013.

This month MamiSerwaa A. of 3Ps Graphical Solutions brings her 15 years experience in the design industry to explore a fresh view and understanding of how you can use branding to GET NOTICED and be successful.

What you will learn
Understanding of what branding is
Know how branding can help grow your business and make you stand out from your competitors
How to evaluate and measure your branding efforts

What to bring:  Bring your current marketing material.

Some suggestions: printout of your website home page, business card, flyers, brochures, advertisements, photographs of your shop, reception area or signage.

Join us this month as we review your marketing materials and learn how to improve them to grow your business.

IPG Search Marketing will be providing the drinks. You bring your lunch, your business cards and a willingness to learn and grow your business.

When
Thursday May 9th
Time – 11:30am – 1pm

Where
Round Rock Chamber of Commerce Board Room
(You don’t need to be a member to attend)
212 East Main Street
Round Rock, TX 78664

Cost
This event is completely free but there is limited space so please register to attend.

Registration and More Information
http://online-marketing-brown-bag-lunch.eventbrite.com/

Contact Ken at KenPartain@wemakemarketingeasy.com

Attract More Customers and Make More Money with the Latest Online Marketing Techniques! Whether you run a holistic business or a professional practice you can learn to use the many free and low-cost tools to market your business more effectively online.

Ken Partain from IPG Search Marketing, an expert in helping small businesses get found online, will share specific tactics you can use to effectively attract new clients and grow your business.

Throughout this series we will be covering the following topics
Google Places and Google Plus for Business
7 Key Factors of Effective Online Marketing
Crafting an Effective Online Marketing Strategy
Getting Started in Social Media
Building Your Online Marketing Fortress
Blogging for Business
Facebook for Business
Twitter for Business
Using LinkedIn to Grow Your Business
Email Marketing
Using Location-based Services to Grow Your Business

After the website is updated, the SEO is done and the connections and posts on social media are completed there still exists the work of transforming your online prospects into buyers. And even more importantly, keeping the customers you already have.

With the truth in mind that our customers have many buying options these days; it’s imperative to remember that “Customer Service Is What Will Set You Apart From Your Competition”. Here are 5 ideas to help your business flourish!

1. Thank You’s and Referral Fees. Something as simple as a personal thank you note can distinguish you and get you more business. And after you thank them…if you really want to ramp up your business pipeline, share the revenue. This can be done by offering some sort of referral fee when your customers or anyone sends you business. People love to get checks in the mail and that’s just what we do, every month we send out referral fees to those who refer business to us, they love it and we get to show appreciation that’s above and beyond the warm fuzzies.

2. Make your website as user friendly as possible. It needs to make sense and be easy to use. Most of us are too busy and there are too many purchasing options to expect your website visitors to spend time trying to make sense of your system. If organization isn’t your thing, just ask your customers for feedback concerning your website. And when you get it, make changes.

3. Make it easy for customers to buy from you. Set-up your buying system so that it is super easy. Some examples would be if you are a brick and mortar business put the address on the home page, above the fold, so that customers don’t need to search around to find it. The phone number too. Make it easy to find, right up at the top. Sounds too easy but I can’t tell you how often I can’t find these two important pieces of information on a site. If customers buy online, remove all barriers to the process, such as technology that doesn’t work every time and needless steps in the process.

4. Don’t forget your existing customers. We used to go to a vet for our pets who sent out coupons in the mail, they were always for ‘new customers only’. There was never one for current customers. This sends a message and it’s not really the message that keeps customers. A mentor of mine once told me that my current customers are my most important customers. You may have heard it put another way. “It’s easier and less expensive to keep a current client than it is to get a new one.” That really made sense and has stuck with me to this day.

5. Under promise and over deliver. I know this idea has been around a long time. That’s because it’s a really good one! People love to feel heard and considered, nowhere more than in business. That same mentor also told me that relationships are extremely important in business. What better way to make lasting relationships with your clients, new and existing, than to continually go beyond what you have promised them.

Have any ideas of your own? Please share them in the comments below.

According to Jason Wilson, Lead Product Designer, Pinterest is getting a new look, designed to make discovering things on Pinterest easier.

Pinterest has been listening to the feedback of their users.  And, after working with a group of users to test the New Look, Pinterest has rolled out some changes.

Here are some of the changes…

New Discovery Features – Some of the new features include the ability to explore the entire board without leaving the page you are on. Also, you can now find more things pinned from the same website and they have added ‘People who pinned this also pinned’ this will help you find pins that might interest you.

Bigger Pins – With a desire to make things simpler and cleaner they have made bigger pins.

Back Button – In response to feedback they have made it easier to keep your place with a back button that takes you back to where you were no matter how far you go.

Comments Box – They have removed the comments button that used to appear when you hovered over a pin, now to leave comments just click on the pin and enlarge it and you’ll see the comment box and you can leave your comment.

Categories – The categories used to be located in the center at the top now the categories section is in the top left corner next to the search field. Under this menu you will find the Home Feed, Popular Section, Everything, Gifts and the other categories. There’s also a new videos section.

Rebuilt Foundation – One of the major changes, and one not readily noticeable to Pinners, is the rebuilding of the foundation of the website, making Pinterest more reliable for the users and easier for improvement.

How To Get The New Look

• Scroll over your business/profile name on the top right corner of your account. When the drop-down menu appears click on the last option, Switch to the New Look.
• When the pop-up asks you if you are ready to switch for good, click on the red Git It Now button.
• A welcome message will appear, click the red Okay button to complete the set-up.

Leave Feedback – To leave your feedback go to http://blog.pinterest.com/post/45669182372/our-new-look-more-ways-to-discover-what-you-love.  Scroll down to the comment section and share your ideas.

We’re coming up on the 10th Anniversary of a little piece of software that isn’t so little any more. On May 27th, 2013 WordPress will celebrate 10 years of existence. In those 10 years they have come a very long way to becoming one of the most popular open source website platforms in the world.

What started out as a simple blogging platform has evolved to the place where, as of a year ago, it powered 49% of the top 100 blogs in the world.

And WordPress continues to gain popularity.  According to more recent statistics, WordPress has a 54.8% market share among all website content management systems. http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all

I’ve been a fan of WordPress since I was introduced to the platform around 2007. Today it is the only platform we use when we build websites for ourselves and for clients.

Here’s why…

1. WordPress is easy to use and understand. If you want to edit a page or add a new post you can, easily, without knowing any programming languages.

2. You can add other functionality to your WordPress website easily too, such as adding a form or creating a poll for voting. In reality you can do just about anything you can imagine. Out of the box WordPress is excellent. When you start adding functionality it gets really interesting, which leads me to my next point.

3. WordPress has almost 25,000 plugins that provide additional functionality for your site. We use numerous plugins for our sites and our client sites. One of my favorites is WordPress SEO by Yoast. I have used numerous SEO plugins and this one seems to be the most thorough and has the most options for completely optimizing your website.

4. WordPress uses up-to-date technology, which is rolled out through regular updates. WordPress is open-source, which means the code is freely available to the public to use and improve on. Because of this, there are thousands of programmers around the world working to make WordPress better every day.

Because the WordPress software is updated so regularly it uses the latest code and is written to the latest web standards. This makes WordPress attractive to the search engines. This means your WordPress site has a good chance of outranking other sites on Google, Yahoo and Bing that are not using the latest technology available.

5. Over the last 10 years WordPress has evolved from a simple blogging platform to a full-fledged content management system. If you have a business website that utilizes WordPress you can set up static pages for things like your About Us section and Products and Services. You can also have a blog that allows you to add content on a regular basis. For SEO purposes, adding fresh content regularly is a huge factor in getting your site found when potential clients search for what you offer.

6. You can create many types of websites with WordPress. There are currently over 1,700 free WordPress themes available for your site. For those that want more customization or additional layout options there are also hundreds of companies that build premium WordPress themes. Studio Press is our hands-down favorite. You can monetize your blog with classified advertising themes or business directory themes. E-commerce and online stores themes are also available to sell both physical and downloadable products, like ebooks or music.

When you choose your theme consider what you want to do with your site. If you decide to change the strategy for your site later on, you can easily change themes to create whatever you want with WordPress. Taking the time to learn WordPress or hiring someone who knows WordPress can help your business dramatically.

Let us know what you love about WordPress in the comments below.

And if I can help you out in any way be sure to reach out to me by email or call me toll-free at 1-877-334-8022.

Recently Google launched a new update to the Google Places for Business dashboard in the US. The update currently affects new users only. Google will be gradually rolling out updates to existing Google Places for Business users in the coming weeks.

Google is saying that the newly updated dashboard makes it easier to manage your business presence across Google.

Here’s what’s new in the dashboard:
The interface has been updated and it makes editing your information easier, Google maps shows the status of your business on Google Maps, tracking your business’s performance has improved and edits will go live faster.

If you are currently a Google Places for Business or Google Plus user it’s very important that you not make new accounts/pages for listings that already exist.

Here’s what Google says about existing and new accounts…

What should I do if I’m an existing Google Places for Business user?  Sit tight and continue to use Google Places for Business to update and edit your listing. The update currently affects new users only. Please do not make new accounts/pages for listings that already exist. Please know that the update will be gradually rolling out to existing Google Places for Business users like you in the coming weeks.Check back on this forum for announcements and updates.

What should I do if I’m currently using Google+ to manage a local Google+ page?  Continue to use Google+ to manage the page. We do not recommend making any additional accounts or pages for pages that already exist.

What should I do if I’m using the bulk tool to manage multiple locations for my business?  Please continue to use the bulk tool to manage the listings. Sit tight! We’ve got some updates coming for bulk users that we hope you’ll like.

What should I do if I’m new to Google Places for Business and have fewer than 10 locations?  Just visit http://places.google.com and start setting up your listings! Note that only some new signups in the US will see the new dashboard. We are planning to open the new dashboard up to all new signups very soon.

What should I do if I’m new to Google Places for Business and have 10 or more locations?  Our bulk management tool hasn’t changed. Feel free to start setting up your listings at http://places.google.com/manage, which is our tool for bulk uploading. (https://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=178024)

More information about the New Update to Google Places for Business

It seems like I talk with small business owners every day about blogging and the question that always comes up is “What do I write about on my blog? This question has been addressed thousands of times before so I’ll share with you what I’ve found. Hopefully this will spark some creative ideas of your own.

Recently a colleague of mine, Jessica Scanlon with Hot Dog Marketing, wrote a blog post called How To Come Up With Blog Topics, which is a great place to start.

In this post Jennifer talks about four areas where you can find inspiration for writing blog posts:

• Dial into Your Expertise and Passion
• Get Ideas from Your Customers
• Search Social Media
• Watch Your Competition

One of the common threads I see in posts like this, is to answer customer questions. This article in the New York Times goes into a bit of Q&A with Marcus Sheridan, owner of River Pools and Spas in the Virginia / Maryland area. It’s worth taking a few minutes to see how Mr. Sheridan completely turned his business around by blogging about the questions and concerns plaguing his prospects and clients.

Need more specific ideas to spark your blogging creative fire?

Jill Whalen from High Rankings Advisor wrote a post last year with 67 Ideas for Blog Topics. She has broken them out into 6 key areas, Upcoming Events, Contests and Other Promotions, Tutorials, Product Support and How-To Guides, Show Your Expertise, Interviews and Miscellaneous.

And if that wasn’t enough Tad Chef over at SEOptimise created a list of 50 Blog Post Ideas for Business Blogging that should help as well. This particular post was written almost 5 years ago but every single item on the list is still pertinent today.

Here’s a great quote from that article:

Remember that business blogging is about value. That’s indeed the most crucial difference between private and business blogs. In private blogs people want to express themselves, business bloggers want to create value for others. So while writing a post for a business blog always consider this question: Of what use can this article be to potential clients, people in my industry and the general public?

Now go write something and get back on track with your blog.

Thursday April 11th, 2013 with Ken Partain

Trendstream, which publishes the Global Web Index, released its fourth quarter data showing the number of active Google+ users has grown to 343 million, making it the second-largest social media network after Facebook. This fact alone is something to take notice of. But your involvement with Google+ goes way beyond how popular the platform is.

Google+ is now the core of everything Google. Having a presence on the platform and actually using it to promote your website, company and events now affects how well your website ranks in a Google search.

Google+ is also a tool for authentication. Google is attempting to authenticate every piece of content on the web and associate it with a real business or person. This helps keep down the spam and other low-quality content from their search results.

Join us this month as we dig into Google+ and learn how to use all of the new features to grow your business.

IPG Search Marketing will be providing the drinks. You’ll bring your lunch, your business cards and a willingness to learn and grow your business.

When
Thursday April 11th
11:30am – 1pm

Where
Round Rock Chamber of Commerce Board Room
(You don’t need to be a member to attend)
212 East Main Street
Round Rock, TX 78664

Cost
This event is completely free but there is limited space so please register to attend.

Registration and More Information
http://online-marketing-brown-bag-lunch.eventbrite.com/
http://www.wemakemarketingeasy.com/
Contact Ken at KenPartain@wemakemarketingeasy.com