April 27, 2011 by Mary Killelea 

A wonderful way to help increase your local presence for your business is to create a presence for your business on yelp!

What is Yelp?  Yelp is a website that aims to connect people with great local businesses and Yelp Business Accounts allow businesses to share information with the Yelp Community. Simply put, it’s word of mouth — amplified.

10 tips to get you started on Yelp

1. Create your profile - This shows Yelp users who you are and where you’re located, etc. 

2. Unlock your Business Page - If you don’t know what that is or how to do it go watch this video from Yelp that shows how business owners can use the business tools.

3. Add an Event - If you’re a local business and you’re sponsoring a event share this with people on Yelp. Also promote these type of events on Facebook and Twitter.

4. Fill out your bio - Tell people about you and let them connect to you in away the competition doesn’t offer.

5. Choose a Custom URL for Your Yelp Profile - it’s another great opportunity for branding and for looking professional and current and it’s easier to remember.

6. Offer Specials & Discounts - Encourage people to check out your listing by offering special discounts, special events or limited time offers on your page. Consider a special discount if a customer says “I saw you on Yelp.”
Yelp recently rolled out check-in offers, similar to Foursquare this is great because when people checkin then it shows others where their friends are going and it’s likely they too will want to visit.

7. Recommend Other Businesses - Remember Social Media isn’t just about you.. share with others great businesses you love.

8. Respond to Reviews  - People love to see a business owner own up to mistakes or address concerns of their customers. Respond in a very nice and polite way and it will have a great impact.

10. Publish Your Reviews to Facebook and Twitter - Log into your Yelp account, click on the “My Account” button, and then follow the instructions in the “External Services” tab.

If you utilize this one tool you will start to see better traffic to your site - like any social media engage and respond to clients. They want a personal experience and Yelp is a great tool for connecting with customers.

 April 25, 2011 By Mary Killelea

Today I was reading a great article on Mobile SEO from Chris Silver Smith who writes for the the Locals Only column at Search Engine Land. Chris “Silver” Smith is director of optimization strategies for KeyRelevance.

Here are the highlights from his post on .

Optimizing for mobile is fairly simple. In fact, it’s so simple that it’s surprising that more companies are not delivering mobile-friendly versions of their pages.

To optimize for mobile search, try the following:

• Perform content negotiation when a user lands on your site — if their accept-header indicates a preference for a mobile flavor webpage, deliver the mobile version of your page to them.
• Google has a separate bot for crawling/indexing mobile versions of pages. So, you can deliver both a mobile version page up on the very same URL you’re using for the regular, full-blown HTML page, as long as you’re performing the content negotiation check on the backend.
• Google has identified a few different mobile-friendly languages which they support, so you’ll want to use one of them: XHTML Basic 1.1, XHTML MP 1.2, cHTML, or WML 1.3.
• Disclose that you have mobile-friendly pages outright. Googlebot-mobile will eventually discover them, but it could happen quicker if you generate a mobile sitemap and then notify Google through your Webmaster Tools account.
• Let smartphone users choose formats manually, if they wish. Provide a link from the regular page to the mobile version, and vice-versa so users can choose to switch.
• WordPress has some plugins that may handle delivering up mobile-friendly versions of blogs.
• Similar to WordPress and depending on your content management system, or the programming language used to develop your site, there could also be freeware programs, modules or libraries that would make it easiest to get your mobile version set up. Using off-the-shelf code may get you up and running quicker, and save you time.

April 21, 2011 by Mary Killelea

Today I attended the 2011 eMarketing Summit and once again it was a wonderful event filled with useful sessions that highlighted areas in the world of Social Marketing, Search and Mobile Marketing.

The highlight for me for sure was the presentation on The Mobile Marketing Frontier by Aron Ezra, CEO Macroview Labs. It was hard not to be overwhelmed by the numbers and opportunity he presented in the Mobile arena.  Here are some of the interesting stats he provided. 

650,000 Smart phones are activated daily

over 350,000 apps are available in the Apple App Store

there have been over 10 BILLION downloads

mobile searches are up 500% in the last 2 years.

more time is spent by users on their smart phones browsing the web than talking on their phones

Ask yourself if you accidently left your wallet and your mobile phone behind some where like on a bus, which would you be more concerned about retrieving? The majority say their phone!

Another interesting take away from Aron’s presentation was and I am summarizing this is, that just like social media the value or motivation for a company has to be engagement with users not so much sales - sales will come thru user engagement, exposure of your business, and the interation you create. If you are looking to create an app don’t create for the sole purpose of making a buck. Create apps that are free, more peope will sample them and use them as opposed to even selling them for .99 cents.  There are ways to monitize it not at the expense of customers but think out side the box at partnerships or sponsors, while still making it accessible to users for free.

Each company is unique and each purpose and function and desired engagement from their audience is unquie - know your audience, test your apps, listen to feedback and study the anyaltics and if you can afford to test amoungst focus groups do so.

Developing a mobile site  is different from a regular website, KNOW what you’re doing or hire an expert in mobile development, there are compability & design issues that need to be addressed. Users use their desktops differently than they use their mobile phones — don’t just recreate your site in a mobile version. When designing think of of the users reason for looking up your site via thier phone vs. the desktop, understand their reason for engagement, help them understand and appreciate their reason for engagement. If you have a mobile site promote that from your website - share that info with your users to build your relationship with them.  Some of your users depending on your offering or business type might be android users vs. iphone users. This is valuable information keep this in mind when you are designing your mobile site or app. 

Lastly the biggest take away from Aron’s presentation which I don’t think people get yet is  MOBILE MARKETING should be a part of your marketing mix. I still believe as a business you should try and increase your web presence thru SEO and Social Media like facebook and seriously consider mobile marketing as another opportunity to build your brand!

QR stands for Quick ResponseApril 20, 2011 By Mary KilleleaQR Codes are two dimensional barcodes that can be decoded using web enabled mobile device with a camera.

1. Web Enabled Phone with a camera
2. QR Code App Downloaded to Smart Phone
3. Customer takes a picture of the QR Code
4. Phone reads it and either by

a. sending you to a link  to a web page or youtube video
b. it gives you a text message
c. saves as a vcard. 

Drawbacks
There are No standards
Have to download an app
Spotty Wireless connection possibilities.

Pros
If you offer them to your client you are perceived as a  foreword thinking company it’s an added value to your client
likely to become more and more popular

HOW TO CREATE IT:
A service for creating a QR code is called bit.ly-bit.ly  it will not only create a QR code for you, but will also track it. (Note: You have to create an account to track QR codes.)

Here are some questions to ask your clients before you provide a quote: 

1. What are you wanting the code to do when it was scanned?
2. Do you want it to go a your site?
3. Do you want it displayed on your site? If not on your site on what third party will it be placed?
4. Will it send a text, link to a video, link to a landing page? 
5. Do you want it to go to a unique landing page if so  will we be asked to create that and if so what does that encompass?
6. How do you envision your customers utilizing the QR codes?

After you get your client feedback then you can provide an educated estimate for the task. These are fun, new and innovative and soon will be utilized by the masses the sooner you get familiar with them the better it will be for you and your customer!

Check out this video by Don Crowther on ways to utilize QR Codes