Archive for the ‘Local Business’ Category
It’s very exciting that Be Visible Associates’ client Dr. Michael Sinkin was featured in print and web in the New York Daily News yesterday.
The article is about how small businesses are seeing success by using Social Media marketing. Dr. Sinkin has increased his practice by using Facebook, Twitter and Blogging. Don’t think a sole medical practitioner can use Social Media effectively? Think again!
Read the article:
Word of mouth: Scores of businesses are joining the conversation with Twitter, Facebook
Photo: NY Daily News
Tags: Blog, Blogging, Facebook, Local Business, Michael Sinkin, NY Daily News, NYC Local Business, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Word of Mouth Marketing
Posted in Local Business, Social Media | 1 Comment »
November 2nd, 2010
How can Social Media help my business grow? This is a question I get asked a lot. And I can quote lots of examples of how businesses are successfully using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But use Social Media to grow a medical practice? That may seem a little far-fetched, right?
I have a client who is a dentist. Not only is he a great dentist, he’s also a lot of fun. His personality combined with is skill is the reason why his patients (myself included) love (and don’t dread) going to the dentist.
I helped him develop a website, and now create a blog. For many months, he asked me over and over, “I don’t understand what blogging is going to do for me”. I really felt, and so did his friends, that my dentist’s natural love of conversation and pontificating on any subject is the perfect combination of traits to make a great blogger!
So, finally, armed with a laptop, the doctor began to blog, usually on train on his way home. In the meantime, I set up a Facebook Fan Page for him and invited all his personal friends to become his fans (of course, his children were his first fans!).
The first blog was posted last week and simultaneously appeared on the doc’s Facebook Fan Page. Lo and behold! On her wall, some of his daughter’s Facebook friends saw the post and said “Hey! I didn’t know your dad is a dentist! I need a new dentist!” Guess what? New patients!
So, what’s the moral of this story?
• Blogging increases the visibility of your business, even if you are a medical professional.
• Your friends’ friends are a great source of new customers (patients).
• Social Media works!
Do you have any similar experiences you can share?
Tags: Blog, Blogging, Facebook, Social Media
Posted in Blogging, Facebook, Local Business, Social Media | 4 Comments »
December 3rd, 2009
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Posted in Local Business | No Comments »
October 11th, 2009
Who answers the phone when someone calls your business? Do you have an automated attendant or do you have a “live” person handing calls? If yours is like most businesses these days, you probably use an automated attendant. An auto attendant can certainly save money on payroll, but do you know how it’s affecting your bottom line?
I have always paid a lot of attention to how my service clients’ incoming calls are handled. After all, if I have set up an advertising campaign for them I want to be sure that every lead that is generated from that campaign are accounted for. I’m lucky because I when I set up Pay Per Click campaigns, I include with a free service that enables my clients to see what incoming leads are generated and listen to a recording of each call.
Recently, I performed a very unscientific experiment to see I could discern a connection between how incoming calls are handled and overall conversions. I discovered that auto attendants get significantly more hang-ups than when a live person picks up the phone. In addition, I discovered that most auto attendant systems seem to have at least one, if not all, of the following issues:
- Too many rings before extension pick up (the most hang-ups here)
- Long delays connecting to extensions (leads to customer frustration)
- Confusing employee directories (totally frustrating)
- Outdated information in the recording (such as services provided)
- The sales department is the last option in the extension list (should be the first!)
Try phoning your own company as if you are a first time caller. What’s your experience? If it’s less than stellar, do something about it fast. Now’s not the time to let any incoming leads go.
Remember, the sales process begins at “Hello” and it’s the first step in to getting to “Yes!”
Tags: Incoming Leads, pay per click, Sales
Posted in Local Business, Paid Search, Sales | 2 Comments »
October 6th, 2009
Question: I am an interior designer and I have a friend and colleague who is a real estate agent. We each would like to start a blog. Would it be effective for us to do a blog together since our two areas are related?
One of the first things to ask yourself when conceiving your blog is: “Who is my audience?” “Who is going to get benefit from the information I can share?” In this case, a combined interior design and real estate bIog may not be a very good idea. Are the people who are interested in interior design the same people as those who are interested in real estate? Not necessarily.
For instance, if your friend the real estate agent posts a blog about, say, the perils of buying a home in foreclosure, the person who is interested in buying vintage furniture for their living room will probably think “this blog doesn’t give me the info I’m looking for” and not come back.
However, that doesn’t mean that you should never co-write a blog. Many bloggers invite guest authors to post on their blogs if the content is valuable to the audience. For instance, I recently co-wrote a blog with Elizabeth Beskin of Fifth Avenue Digital. We attended the O’Reilly Twitter Boot Camp together and wrote “10 Things I Learned at Twitter Boot Camp” and posted it on our blogs. My blog s
I recommend “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” which is a terrific e-Book published by ProBlogger.net. It will really help you identify what you bring to the table in Social Media and get you on track.
Posted in Local Business | 2 Comments »
September 28th, 2009
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Twitter lately. The more I use it, the more I discover about it. The more I use it, the more I learn how to use it more effectively. I have recently figured out a few little tricks that make Twitter a more productive tool for me, so I’d like to share them with you!
My particular goal on Twitter is to learn everything I can about Internet Marketing and Social Media and then share what I learn with my followers. I am always really concerned that my followers (and my potential followers) can easily understand what I am tweeting about.
So, if you have the same or similar goals, here are 4 tips that just may make your Twitter activity more productive.
(more…)
Posted in Local Business | 2 Comments »
September 10th, 2009
As promised, here are more definitions of Twitter supplied by my friends, my network, and my followers. It seems as if the fastest growing social media phenomenon of our day is incredibly hard for people to describe. Possibly because Twitter serves so many different kinds of purposes to so many different people.
What surprised me most about this survey is that I received some really negative definitions of Twitter…from marketing people! I didn’t reprint them fearing that out of context it would seem as if they came from me (plus there were some four letter words in many of them!) I certainly can understand people who, because they don’t understand Twitter, are skeptical about it. But marketing people…get real!
That being said, I would love to hear YOUR definition. Here are some more definitions that people sent to me. Any of them ring true to you?
What is Twitter (Again)?
- An extremely powerful Internet marketing tool when you have an effective Twitter strategy consistent with your overall brand.
- A filtered real-time human thought custom RSS feed.
- Both a megaphone and microscope. Just don’t put an avatar with a beautiful bikini model, don’t sell Amway and don’t talk about yourself all damn day.
- A micro-blogging platform primarily used to provide status updates as to our whereabouts and activities of interest
- The laziest method of blogging possible.
- Centralized live news feed, offering followers snippets of information of current information, news, trends, topics, etc.
- A short-form messaging platform that allows you to publish messages in less than 140 characters through different mediums like desktop applications, cell-phones, and the web.
- A broadcast medium that is like reading and writing headlines. It is a great way to get to know people and people get to know you – as in all the social communities. I like how fast paced Twitter is and it works with my attention span – getting snippets of news and choosing what you would like to read into more as many people give you links to more detailed information.
- A micro-blog that has enabled the formation of a new breed of online communities to grow and exchange information at a faster than ever pace, approaching real time.
- Twitter transmits twaddle.
- Broadcasting to the world.
- The vain of our existence.
- Electronic stalking for the hyperactive individual.
- The question should be, how do you, personally, use Twitter?
- A great line of communication between companies & clients.
- A way to learn what’s happening and who’s talking right now worldwide. It’s a way to search for and join conversations.
- A little green ego machine.
Tags: Social Media, Twitter, Twitter Definition
Posted in Local Business, Social Media, Twitter | 1 Comment »
August 20th, 2009
I spend a lot of time these days talking to local businesses about Social Media and discussing how they can use Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other channels. And that can be challenging because in many cases people have a hard time seeing the connection between online social activities and their businesses. Sometimes even in spite of the fact that they are familiar with one or more social channels already for their personal use.
I have discovered that telling stories about how other businesses are using Social Media to be the best way to get to that “AHA!” moment where the possiblities are suddenly staring them right in the face.
I came across this article in the New York Times that I think successfully illustrates the opportunities for local business to successfully use Twitter. Take a look and let me know your thoughts!
Click here:
Mom-and-Pop Operators Turn to Social Media, The New York Times
Tags: Blog, Facebook, Local Business, Social Media, Twitter
Posted in Blogging, Facebook, Local Business, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »
July 23rd, 2009
There have always been differing views on how important your domain name is to the success of your business online. For a large company whose brand it’s really crucial. Over the years numerous large corporations have spent millions of dollars to secure their preferred domain name. (Fund.com was bought for $9.99 million; see The 10 Most Expensive Domain Names http://tinyurl.com/bpdua9).
In my experience working with local businesses, however, I’ve discovered that a domain name ranks very low on the list of what makes successful web marketing. The bottom line is: if your company provides a service and you are properly visible on the web when a searcher needs your service, your domain name isn’t that important. It certainly isn’t as important as good website design and content. And for SEO, as far as I can tell, a domain name is not very important to the search engines either. Certainly not as important as incoming links, good content, etc. (See http://tinyurl.com/c4germ).
But, it’s very important to protect your domain name. Case in point: clients of mine (a service business) have owned 2-3 versions of their company name + .com for a number of years. One of the few versions they hadn’t bought was recently registered by an e-tailer who began using it to sell products online. Since this seller did not have a phone number on their site, when unhappy customers (and there were a lot of them) tried to contact them, they couldn’t. So, they performed a search, found my clients’ website and called their office instead. Up to 30 calls from angry customers were coming in every day! This caused havoc in my client’s office as well as making it impossible for us to clearly analyze their web analytics, not to mention jeopardizing their company reputation. At the end, my client was forced to buy the domain name from the e-talier for a lot more than it would have cost to register it at the beginning (raking up some thousands of dollars in legal fees, as well).
Registering a domain name is relatively inexpensive. Whether you use Go Daddy, Register.com, Network Solutions, or another company, my suggestion is to go on today and buy as many iterations of your domain name as you can afford. I just discovered that www.BeVisibleAssociates.com is available, but it wasn’t when I started my business. I bought it and some other variations, plus BetsyKent.com, as well, just to be safe (don’t stick to .com, either, as extensions will probably not mean much in the future).
So, is your domain name important? Yes!
Tags: domain names, Local Business, web marketing
Posted in Internet Marketing, Local Business | No Comments »
May 7th, 2009
