seo penguin

Building Buzz for Your Business

Apr 5, 2010 conference, laidoffcamp, sem, seo, social media

Building Buzz for your Business
Wendy Kennedy

Launched her own business 23kazoos.com in April of last year – it’s close to making 6 figures.
Business owners have one huge challenge: you’ve got to figure out how to get the word out about your business so you can get customers.
Location and lowest price are myths.

Google Local Business Center and Google Maps are becoming huge – make sure to leverage it.
Yelp, citysearch, etc – it’ll create links to help you increase visibility within your

Do not use your real address – use a P.O.Box

Things you can to today to get the word out about your business:

• Visibility + Credibility = Profitability – the internet has become our yellow pages. You need to have a “blog site”. Websites are dead, don’t even have a website, have a blog site. 90% of businesses don’t have a website/blog site. Do people want to be sold or do they want to read your journal to get to know you. You don’t have to write a lot, make sure the paragraphs are good, don’t sell to people.
• This is why I blog: to build visibility + credibility, so those people that want to connect with me, can.
• Mistake: you’ve a blog site and the last time you posted was a year ago. If it’s not current people think you’re out of business. 65% of the population are visual learners – they gather information more easily through pictures/video.
• What is the number 1 thing people look for on the internet: they look for answers to their problem. Your website has to answer the questions your customers are asking. Just because you have one doesn’t mean it’ll get found. If you hire a designer don’t assume it’ll get found.
• Go to the major search engines and submit your site (um… you don’t have to anymore…)
• Google your business/a question your customers ask “where can I find…”
• How much.
• Case studies
• Success in business is about the law of large numbers.
• The Clinton Principle – just show up, and go where the people are. Don’t drive traffic to your blog, go to where the people are.
• Get social! Use social media!
• Leverage facebook – it just beat Google as the largest search engine in the US. Use facebook ads. Make sure you have a facebook fan page.
• Twitter – if you follow people, they’ll follow you. Do not use your account to sell. Start intentionally connecting with influential people: media, small businesses, local groups, etc.
• Be generous. Give things away for free, or for cheap. Give it away for a while, just to give a little piece of what you do to build a name, to build credibility.
• The media, especially TV, is a black hole, and they need to fill it with news from people like us – business owners! A two minute segment on the news is FAR more influential than a two minute commercial – it will generate credibility, not leads.
  • Go to news12, azcentral.com, find their contact information, and submit news worthy information.
• There is one marketing mistake that almost every business owner makes: Do not fail to follow up.
• Statistics show that a client will buy after SEVEN contacts with the company – twitter, commercials, TV, press releases, etc and most sales people give up after TWO times.
• Follow up with an email right away thanking them for the meeting, etc. Send any requested information right away, call them just to connect with them.
• Follow up with an email newsletter.