Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL

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If you are like most people you do not like hype and that may well have kept you from exploring social media as a tool to bring you new business. After all, the fervor and hype surrounding things like Blogs, Facebook, Second Life and the cool kid applications like Twitter are enough to make you puke.

Here’s the thing though – there are also really practical applications of social media that represent big opportunities for small businesses to market yourselves for free.

In the next two sessions I’ll try to dispel some of the hype about social media and show you three to four practical social media tools that almost any business or local marketer can use today to win new local customers. I hope you will give social media a try and come to realize what I have – that social media is beyond hype – it’s revolutionary.

In this episode (runtime 9:58) I’ll explore some pitfalls of social media and also outline a simple definition of social media. I’ll finish by discussing two great social media tools that you should focus on today. My next session will cap things off with my final two social media recommendations for businesses that want to attract new local customers from their town or city.

I mention during the podcast that I would link to a previous post on how small business people can quickly create blog content for use in their blog marketing campaigns. Here’s the post I wrote back in January called The best kept secret for quickly creating new content for your blog and web site.

Julian Seery Gude
editor Local Na8ion
Where you are is where it’s at

Short on time? Here’s the Bottom Line!

Please note that this article was written prior to Local Na8ion’s re-launch and as such the content may not be relevant for today’s audience of local marketers.

I read an informative article over on MarketingSherpa yesterday titled Running Ads in Google Local vs. Main Google Search — Disappointing Results (So Far) about Google Local Search. The story casts a spotlight on the central issue that local search does have which is a) traffic b) the right kind of traffic.

The Traffic Question:

“Partly this was due to the fact that although Google Local ads may get high clicks, there just isn’t much traffic there to begin with. According to Hitwise data (see link to chart below), less than 1% of total Google traffic goes to Local. However, Krutick assured MarketingSherpa that his Local ads got more than enough clicks to the coupon page that there should have been redemptions if the conversion pattern even remotely matched the main Google.com lead redemption.”

The right kind of traffic:

“So why didn’t Local clicks convert? No one knows for sure as no survey was conducted. But, the head of Krutick’s search team did share this speculation, “Marketers are thinking Google Local is going to be used like the yellow pages. You know, you look there when you’re ready to buy something and you want to know about local merchants.

“In reality it didn’t turn out that way for us. Our theory is at Google.com, people are buyers and they are looking for a local store that sells mattresses. However at Google Local, the most searched for term tends to be store name, not category. It’s possible people are only going to Local if they are actually searching for the store itself.”"
And these aren’t easy problems to solve.  The search engines are forging new territory and unlike general search or the Print Yellow Pages that have a proven usage pattern and clear value proposition to users it looks like it’s going to be a trial and error learning process.