- Success Strategies for Creating a Social Media Monitoring System
- Creating and Promoting a Compelling Facebook Contest
- Tips and Tactics for Building an Effective Social Media Measurement System
- Discovering the Fine Art of Setting Rates and Building Packages for Your Services
- Creating an Effective Mobile Marketing Campaign for Local Businesses
- Setting up an Ecommerce Platform with 1ShoppingCart
- Mastering New Tactics for Increasing Your Search Engine Listings
- Maximizing Productivity and Enhancing Communications using Google Tools.

Watch this video for a more in-depth view of what to expect.

Visit VAClassroom to get more information on this years Summer Skills Camp!

2. Social Streams are now indexed and listed in Google and Bing.

3. Social Media Sites generate high local listings in the Search Engines.

If you are participating this means an increase visibility for your business on a local level that can drive traffic to your business. “Link Love”

4. The proliferation of Social Media and the Mobile Web is changing the way consumers search to find what they are looking for.

“Over time the single greatest opportunity is to rule the local search landscape. 20-30-year-olds go straight to their mobile browser or Google Maps to find everything – shoes, food, insurance, a dentist, you name it. If they don’t find you by doing that, then you don’t exist.” -John Jantsch, February 2010

How are you making sure your business is joining these mobile conversations?

5. Ability to build relationship with an audience (even before they visit the business).

Building relationships with them before they even visit your business, extending your influence sphere.

“We (local businesses) have the ability to engage our clients at the point of experience.” – Joe Sorge, Owner of AJbombers
6.  Your competitors are connecting with “YOUR” prospective customers in the Social Media realm.

This statement should have you tossing in bed at night, I’m not sorry if it causes you to loose some sleep at night.   Your competitors are engaging a highly targeted audience and (sorry I’m going to pour the salt on the wound) their participation in social media marketing is allowing them to do it in a cost effective way!

7. Social Media Marketing is way more cost-effective than traditional advertising channels. Simply because it is:

• Targeted
• Personable
• Engaging
• Cost-Effective
• Viral
• Fastest growing medium (Ie. 500k new members a day on Facebook)

Example:  I go to Mack Bros and have the Ample Dumpling Crepes, they are delicious poached apples, pecans, and cheese. Yum, I’m getting hungry now. Then I tweet this out with the hashtag #Foursquare.   Not only do my followers on Twitter see this, but also my Tweeps who are using Foursquare.com.  Then I go to Mack Bros and I check in on Foursquare and add a to do, and some tags,.. Did I dethrone the Mayor?

I hope the visual recipe I just cooked up for you didn’t make you to hungry.  Priceless, you can’t buy that advertising.

Traditional methods like yellow pages, newspaper ads, and radio are:

• Hard to Measure
• Expensive
• Not focused on a target audience

I’m not saying they are useless, but when is the last time you went searching the yellow pages for something you wanted? I use it for a booster seat for my 5 year old… hmmm, I Wonder how many trees where cut down to boost her tushie. Just saying..

8.  Location-Based Social Networks (LBSN) will grow in prominence in 2010 and beyond.

Are your ears burning? They should be! I checked in on Foursquare and left a to do for the next time I visit your business. Who can see it? All my Friends on Foursquare, and did I mention that my Foursquare and Twitter accounts are connected to, yes it got tweeted out to the Twitterverse. Not to mention the update that went out to all of my friends on Facebook.

To all the Local Businesses out there not yet participating “Sweet Social Media Dreams”.

Lets start with how a Blog can keep your website fresh.  When you go to the grocery store you expect fresh new produce right?  Well if your clients visit your unchanging aka static brochure type website they won’t find any new fresh content and soon they will stop visiting your site.  This is one reason so many small business websites fail to perform as desired.

Having a static site is better than not having a site at all, but it is difficult to rank well in the search engines because you are not adding new content.

Search engines are only one part of the equationwhen it comes to web traffic.  Social Media sites like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter have strategies that can be used to promote and drive traffic to  websites but most of these strategies are dependent on the availability of an RSS feed (Real Simple Syndication).

Do you want a way to build relationships or create conversation with your clients and potential clients?  Blogs are relationship building tools. Blogs invite comments your readers can ask questions, give raving reviews, or even submit a complaint.  Complaints can be a great opportunity for a business owner to provide fabulous customer service.

Do you like referrals, Blogs create that word of mouth action.  Blogging helps local businesses create conversation with clients and stay in the view of their customers.

Do I have to be a geek to blog?  No blogs are easy to use and require no special training.
If you can write an email you can post to a blog. If you can attach a photo to an email, you can include a picture in a blog post.

Blogs are simple to optimize for search engines. When your blog is set up right it has built in search engine optimization features that help guide you as you add new content to incorporate the local terms (keywords) that will help your site rank well in search engines.

I look forward to helping you become part of the blogosphere!  My choice in blogging platforms is “WordPress.org”