The minute you hear the scampering of paws across the  CitySquares’ office floor and the sound of excited panting, you know that the CitySquares canine entertainment is about to begin.

Elmer is CitySquares’ co-founder Ben Saren’s 15-month old dog and of course an essential part of the CitySquares’ team – he comes to work every day and keeps us all entertained with his tail-chasing, begging for food, and random excitability.

Because Elmer is always around the office, we thought it would be great to put his adorable mug at the forefront of a new weekly blog entry titled “Elmer’s Weekly Small Business Tip.” These ideas will give neighborhood businesses insight into what they can do to promote and market their businesses every day.

We also want our readers to get to know the CitySquares team and its dynamics. How better to start doing so than by introducing Elmer, the office dog?

Elmer’s Weekly Small Business Tip

Nov 19, 2009

Include a CitySquares Badge on your website so your website visitors can see that you’re on CitySquares and can check out your reviews and other information that might not be on your website. Also, when you add a badge that links to your profile on CitySquares.com, you’re helping your overall search engine optimization. Search engines love links – and links to and from your website and to/from your CitySquares profile is good for your online presence.

Just copy and paste the following HTML code into your website site and remember to personalize both the business name and city within the code.

Small Badge HTML Code

The code below, underneath the images, is what you want to copy and paste into your website’s HTML. The red text is the code you want to customize with the URL of your page on CitySquares and with your city.

<!– Begin CitySquares.com Membership Badge –><br />

<a href=”[URL of your CitySquares profile, including http://]” target=”_blank”><br />

<img src=”http://badges.citysquares.com/smbadge.gif” alt=”[your business name, City] on CitySquares” border=”0″ /><br />

</a><br />

Large Badge HTML Code

The code below, underneath the large badge, is what you want to copy and paste into your website’s HTML. The red text is the code you want to customize with the URL of your page on CitySquares and with your city.

<!– Begin CitySquares.com Membership Badge –><br />

<a href=”[URL of your CitySquares profile, including http://]target=”_blank”><br />

<img src=”http://badges.citysquares.com/badge.gif” alt=“[your business name, City] on CitySquares” border=”0″ /><br />

</a><br />

And that’s it! Once you do that you’ll have a fancy shmancy new badge on your website that links to your profile on CitySquares, and watch the search engines pick that up and give both your own website and your CitySquares profile higher ranking.

If you have any questions about this, just give Elmer a call at 877-61-LOCAL!

]]> http://blog.citysquares.com/2009/11/19/elmers-local-business-tips-nov-19-2009/feed/ 1 http://blog.citysquares.com/2009/06/03/who-can-it-be-now-check-your-analytics/ http://blog.citysquares.com/2009/06/03/who-can-it-be-now-check-your-analytics/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:18:35 +0000 Larry Sullivan http://blog.citysquares.com/?p=721 A small business website can measure success in numerous ways, but probably the most common is traffic. Everyone wants traffic. The more traffic you have the better, correct? I disagree. I would rather get 100 visitors to my site that are strongly interested in my services vs. getting 1000 visitors that really do not care.  Targeted traffic is what you want.

How do you know you are getting targeted traffic? Website analytics.  Many small business owners really have no clue about what sort of traffic they are getting or even how to figure out what the numbers mean.  This post is meant to be a quick introduction to website analytics.

Most web hosting packages you will come with some sort of statistics. There are also programs or services you can purchase.  Probably the best free option right now is Google Analytics.   When looking at a web analytics program/service, you need to be able to answer the following questions:

* Who has been to your website?
* What were they looking for?
* Where did they come from?
* How long did they look at your content?
* Were they locals?

To answer some of these questions, you will need to understand the terms used in web analytics.  For a good list of terms used in analyics, please see Wikipedia .  Below are two terms that I try to point out to folks because they very important.

Visitor / Unique Visitor / Unique User – The uniquely identified client generating requests on the web server or viewing pages within a defined time period. A Unique Visitor counts once within the timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits. Identification is made to the visitor’s computer, not the person, usually via cookie and/or IP+User Agent. Thus the same person visiting from two different computers will count as two Unique Visitors.

Bounce Rate – The percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits at the same page without visiting any other pages on the site in between.

The last point I want to make about web analytics is time.   Time will show trends and this is very valuable when understanding your traffic.  If your website is new, or you recently updated portions of the site, you will need to give it some time to see how that will effect your traffic. The more data points you get, the better informed you will be.

I want to encourage all small business owners to take a few minutes and take a look at your traffic. Can you figure out what is going on with your site?  It is not that hard, once you understand the basics.

Additional Articles:
Below are some excellent articles, written by fellow local search marketers about how analytics can help with your local search marketing campaigns.

• The Most Important Analytics In Local Search
• Using Analytics For Local Search Optimization
• Tracking Local search Traffic with Analytics

It’s probably a bit overstated, but perhaps if consumers have too much power, and small businesses can’t defend themselves, than they’re in trouble. Perhaps all that would be left are huge corporate chains, with substantially more money (and hence power) than any mom-and-pop. They can afford a PR offensive, they can afford hiring dedicated twitter people, dedicated social media experts, etc. The small businesses cannot. And it’s these small businesses that are the thread in our economic quilt. They are essential, and yet they are challenged everyday by huge obstacles, nearly all having nothing to do with the Internet. You’d be surprised by what small businesses have to deal with every day, that threaten their fate. From macro economic conditions, to micro economic conditions, to neighborhood/street construction, to local zoning laws, from tax policies, to crime rates, small businesses can be crushed in ways that might seem petty and insignificant to the average consumer, or to big business. More often than not we really have no idea what small business owners have to go through to keep their doors open, to make payroll, keep their lights on, keep customers happy and returning. Too often then not we’re quick to jump to conclusions, and make assumptions. More often than not, these small businesses are greatly affected by one persons opinion.

Some people will suggest that the best way to counteract this is for the SMBs to “get on Facebook” or “get on twitter” or “hire a social media consultant.” My response? Give me a break! The small business owners response? “What is Facebook? What is twitter? What the heck is social media?”

So, we decided to take another step towards solving this problem for small business owners, and it might be interpreted as a controversial one: CitySquares now allows businesses to opt-out of reviews all together on their CitySquares.com business profile page.

Why? Well, take the local dentist for example, who no matter how hard she tries, she can’t win over all her customers. Truth be told, not everyone enjoys the dentist, right? And we have reason to believe that not all reviews left on a dentists profile are going to be glowing reviews for her root canal skills. Is it fair for this local dentist to have virtually no way to combat this? Sure, we could give her an opportunity to talk back to consumers, but what does that really do for the dentist? It’s her word against another – it’s tit-for-tat, he-said-she-said. And ultimately, that single dentist is up against a whole lot of (mostly) anonymous voices, people who are hiding behind an avatar, a username, while everyone knows who the dentist is, where she works, and have the power to nearly destroy her operation. OK – maybe a bit overstated, but nonetheless, reality!

This is just one scenario – there are lots of others that could be described. But you get the point.

So now, if you’re a small business owner you can opt-out of consumer reviews on your CitySquares business profile.

Here’s how it works:

• If you are a paying customer, you can choose between having reviews, or not having reviews. Period. End of story. There is no gray area – reviews are either enabled, or disabled, for paying customers only.
• If you are not a paying customer, we cannot disable reviews. You must be a customer. And all it takes is $5.99/month to become a customer, and that is all it costs to have reviews disabled on your profile. Not a penny more.

This new feature is not intended to be a revenue opportunity, that’s not the point. It’s not some crafty bait-and-switch, or anything like that. The point of this is to give the merchants a little more power, a little more opportunity to manage their online reputation, at least on CitySquares.com.

We’d like to do much more – and soon we will be. There’s much more in store for small merchants, but I’ll save that for a later post.

What do you think?

Small business marketing is a tricky animal. When you’re starting out, money may be tight, and it may seem like a good idea to skimp on your marketing budget, but don’t. Without marketing, you don’t have customers, and without customers, your business will suffer.

The good news is online marketing can help businesses with relatively small marketing budgets compete with huge corporations by targeting customers looking for their products and services on the Internet. Whereas traditional advertising requires you spend on people outside your target demographic (consider this “wasted spend”), online advertising helps you eliminate wasted dollars by focusing marketing efforts only on people who are most likely to convert into customers.

1 – You Need to Have an Action Plan

What is the goal of online marketing? Growing your business. How do you do this? By driving traffic to your website…

…but how?

There are a slew of ways to drive traffic to your site, but not every strategy makes sense for every business. Before you dump money into pursuing the wrong online marketing strategy, figure out what makes the most sense for you. Consulting a professional online marketing firm is always smart, but try to do a little research first so you understand common terms.

To get you started, let’s look at three of the most common ways to advertise online:

- PPC (pay-per-click) advertising

PPC advertising allows you to target people searching for your products and services online by placing text ads in the results pages of the major search engines. To trigger your ads, you bid on keywords related to your business, indicating which search terms you want to trigger your ads and how much you are willing to spend for clicks generated by specific keywords.

- SEO (search engine optimization)

SEO is the process of driving traffic to your site by improving its ranking in the natural or organic section of the search engine results pages. SEO is complex and involves many factors like site usability, content creation, link building, and more.

- Online display advertising

Online display advertising is the process of placing banner or video ads on specific websites. The upside to online display advertising is the ability to raise brand awareness among your target demographic. The downside is you are usually required to pay regardless of ad performance. There are metrics to consult when placing display ads to help you make smart choices, but ultimately, you are taking a risking a low return on investment (ROI).
Arming yourself with details like the above will better prepare you to navigate the world of online advertising, but reading this blog post is not enough! We’ve only scratched the surface, and there is much more to be learned. Likewise, things on the Internet move and change at such a rapid pace it often takes a professional firm to manage your online campaigns, especially when it comes to PPC management and SEO, both which can be especially difficult to do well.

2 – Tracking Is Essential – Know Your ROI

One of the most attractive features of online advertising is the ability to track results in terms of ROI using analytics and call tracking tools. These tools make it possible to gather valuable data regarding the performance of your campaign(s) and help you make decisions that affect your bottom line.

For example, analytics tools can tell you whether email marketing or display ads are generating more traffic to your site. You can also see which visitors are converting into sales and evaluate which of your online marketing tactics are the most profitable.

3 – You Can’t Be Number One Overnight

Many who begin advertising online are dazzled by PPC and think there is some secret to getting top positioning for their ads, but there isn’t. PPC involves many complicated variables, such as the level of saturation in your market, your keyword selection, the amount of your bids, how well your ads are written, and the relevancy of your landing page. Others discover SEO and think if they toss a few keyword-rich articles onto their site, they will outrank competitors, which is false. The reality is generating website traffic takes time. Anyone who tells you differently is using fly-by-night methods or lying.

4 – Your Website Does Matter (and So Does Your Copy) – Give It Some TLC

While some business owners launch a fancy website and do nothing to generate traffic, others do the opposite: launch a poorly designed and hastily written site and spend tons of money advertising it. Yikes! The truth is your website matters, and a poor execution will hurt your results. Look at your business website as a long-term investment and spend time thinking about how it should look, what it will say, and what you want visitors to do once they arrive. A well-planned website is a gift that keeps on giving; gloss over your site now and you’ll pay later.

5 – Never Give Up

As veterans will tell you, you online marketing is a process. You must experiment and take risks, but you have to know how much you can afford to lose if something doesn’t pan out as planned. Say you want to try a media buy on a popular site, for example. As with most online initiatives, you aren’t sure it will work, but if it does, the results could be astronomical. The key is to know how much you are willing to spend with no return. If you put a big chunk of your marketing budget into something that doesn’t produce results, you’ll be short on marketing dollars down the line.

Good luck!

Clearly, entrepreneurship is not for everyone. I have a good friend who left his high-profile advertising job to start a company and a mere six months later returned to the agency. As he joked, “Nobody told me I was going to have to take out my own trash.”

I think the same thing is true for those trying to market their business online… “No one told me I had to work for it.”

Too many small business think that they can build a website and they are set to go. This is the furthest from the truth. A website is an extension of you business, an investment. It is a dynamic, growing entity. There is so much more to online marketing then having a website.  I have been to a number of small business seminars and all they say to get a website but nothing about what happens after that…

So how should you market your website or business online? There is not one set way to do it. Each business is unique, so it is marketing strategy. Can you do it yourself? You can do some but you will probably need to employ a professional to understand and take advantages of the many nuances of online marketing. Also you need to take a long term approach. It will not happen overnight.

Local search marketing, video marketing, social marketing are all components that your business can take advantage of to increase its visibility online.  Online marketing is very important and can provide huge returns if done properly and one goes in with the correct attitude.

Do you have what it takes to market a business online?