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The following article delves into the three main reasons most companies struggle to gain Facebook “fans” and offers tips and tricks to get your brand not just “liked” but loved.

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The article entitled, “9 reasons your company should use QR codes in your marketing campaign” lists just a few reasons your company should jump on this bandwagon.

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For the basics on listing your local small business on Google Places see our earlier video. Below are some of the key points points for tuning up your Google Places page to get great local SEO results.

Get Some Great Reviews

One important point I forgot to mention is this video about Google Places is that you should encourage your favorite to write a positive reviews for your business. Just navigate to your page, click the “Link” link near the top right, copy it and paste in an email to some good folks.

Company / Organization

Use keywords in this field that you think your target audience will use when they are searching. For example: “Acme Corp – Widgets in Asheville.”

Telephone Number

Use a local telephone number, not an “800″ number. This is a local listing.

Categories

Choose the suggested categories that best describe AND also in local listings (Places) on the search results pages.

Additional Details

Here’s where you can really get creative. You can put almost anything about your business that you want to highlight. On our page we used our social media links for the business. If you paste a URL into the second field it will turn the word in the first into a link. For example: Facebook‎: Facebook

Complete Everything

Fill out every part of this form the best of your ability. The more complete your listing the better.

Extra credit…

Coupons

Add a coupon whether it makes sense or not. The coupon link in your listing will help it stand out from the crowd. For example our says: “Free Consultation. Contact us to discuss your marketing needs and we’ll work with you to create a custom marketing plan for your business, for free.”

For examples see our Google Places page for AVL Marketing. Now that we have it tuned up, it’s time to practice what we preach and go get some reviews…

There are a zillion ways to do this. Here are two that are easy to implement and will be good enough for most of us.

Let’s say you just bought a billboard, or an ad in local newspaper or magazine, and you want to know if this type of advertising will drive traffic to your site where people can learn more about your company, services or products. You could use something like “mycompany.com/newspaper” and track the traffic to that URL. But most people won’t bother typing in the extra stuff, unless there is some special content there or other incentive. Plus it’s hard to remember. Domain forwarding to the rescue!

Probably a better option is to use a special, dedicated domain name for that particular ad. Something like “MyCompanyNC.com” or “GetMyCompany.com.” You get the picture. Just add a simple modifier or possibly use an altogether different but descriptive term (e.g. “SpringfieldPlumbers.com” instead of “JohnsonPlumbing.com”).

Now what? Well, you use domain forwarding or redirecting, call it whatever, and point that thing to a special page, or tracking URL, on your real site. I’m going to outline two different ways to do this that are fairly easy for non-techie types to implement. In fact, you can even combine the two if you want, but that might get tricky.

Option 1

Tracking a Domain Redirect with a Landing Page with Google Analytics

1. Register the new domain that will be in your ad.
2. If you don’t already have it, install Google Analytics on your main site.
3. Create a landing page on your real site: “mycompany.com/landingpage.html” (Name it whatever you want, but make sure the Google Analytics tracking code is added to this page.)
4. Go back to registrar you used to register the new domain. Edit the “host record” settings to redirect it to the landing page you just created on the real site.
5. Use the new domain in your print, billboard, etc. ad.
6. Check Google Analytics for results: Content > Landing Pages

Option 2 (This assumes your site is running WordPress. High five if it is.)

Tracking a Domain Redirect with WordPress and the Redirection Plugin

1. Register the new domain that will be in your ad.
2. Install the Redirection plugin for WordPress.
3. Create a fake tracking URL for your real site and add the redirect using the plugin: “mycompany.com/billboard” (Name it whatever you want, but make sure you the exact same URL in the next step.)
4. Go back to registrar you used to register the new domain. Edit the “host record” settings to redirect it to  a fake tracking URL for your real site: “mycompany.com/billboard”
5. Use the new domain in your print, billboard, etc. ad.
6. Check WordPress admin panel for results: Log in > Tools > Redirection

How easy is that? Questions? We’re here to help.

If I sound mellow in this one it’s because A) I had a huge, and awesome, dinner at Sunny Point Cafe in west Asheville, and B) it’s a little past my bed time. This video is almost 10 minutes but if you’re interested in using Google Apps in your small business I think you’ll find it worth your time. If you don’t, check your warranty.

“Sites” are really easy to set up, and you don’t need any technical skills at all. If you can follow simple directions you can build some wicked cool tools in no time. My favorites are the “Filing Cabinet” and “Lists” pages. Those things alone make it worth the set up time. Yes, you can just Google Docs to share most things, but with a “Filing Cabinet” page you upload anything, including, say, a graphic for company letterhead.

One thing I didn’t mention is the URL for sites is uh… not so memorable:

http://sites.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/

This can be changed to something like:

http://intranet.yourdomain.com/

But that gets a little technical. It’s not hard but you do need to have access to your web hosting control panel, and know how to make some tweaks. I may cover that in another video.

Play around with it, and if you get stuck on something don’t hesitate to give me a shout.

Google Apps is a fantastic suite of tools you can use in your small business… fo’ free. I have used Apps for my own businesses, my personal life, and I’ve even set it up for my kids’ small private school.

And just to be clear kids, I’m talking about setting up Google Apps for very own domain. So your employees can have accounts like “EmployeeName@YourCompany.com.” Of course, you can use Apps without also using the email. But…

I really can’t imagine why any small to mid size business would bother with managing their own email solution. I’ve heard a lot of excuses, all of them bogus. I may do another video specifically about that. I understand that some people may not like the Gmail interface (Although everyone I’ve convinced to use it became a convert) but you can still use Outlook or whatever email software you prefer.

As I mention in the video, “Sites” make it possible to quickly make an intranet(s) and project sites where your team(s) can collaborate.  “Sites” is one of the best kept secrets in Google Apps. Stay tuned for a video on that! It’s next.

As always call or email if you have any questions about this stuff. Help is free.

Let me know if you to know more about a particular topic.

Follow these steps to add your company to the Google Local Business Center. Make sure potential customers are able to find you business. I will take you through the entire process in this short video and I also point out a couple things that have caused problems for us in the past. For small businesses operating in a local area, as opposed to only online, it’s critical that your company show up in the Local results, which are usually at the top on search engine results pages.

There are some additional steps to take that will help make sure your company appears in the first set of Local listings, but we’ll cover those in a later video.

If you have any questions or trouble with this process just email or call and we’ll help you get it sorted out. No cost for that, we just want to help.

The “wisdom of the crowds” or at least the “logo designs of the crowds.” This describes LogoMyWay.com. In my opinion this is a fantastic way for a small business or other organization to get a great looking logo designed at a very reasonable cost.

Sure, a full-tilt pro logo designer may do a better job but who has that budget? If you want to go that route, how about this: Submit your concept for a logo design and see what you get from the crowd. If one of the designs is even close to what you want, select it as the winner, and you’ll have a great starting point to take to your big money designer.

On the other hand you might get a logo you love for very little money. So what’s the downside?