Ads Next™ Local Internet Advertising, Annapolis, Maryland, Internet Advertising Solutions, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design and Integration, Social Media Marketing

Here are some quick stats about facebook that should be interesting to business owners.

o Last month Facebook hit 300 million users
o An average of 250,000 new users join everyday
o About 34% work as professionals, sales, executives, educators or are in technical careers.
o The fastest growing demographic on Facebook consists of users 25 and older

If you decide to build a Facebook page for your business here are some tips that are important for establishing your Facebook presence.

Create a profile that is interesting

Upload a lot of photos.  Photos help fans connect with your company on an emotional level.  Your pictures can include your logo, pictures of your best selling products, company events, ads, employees, and etc.

Make sure your business description is unique and compelling.  A dull description may not appeal to many fans.  Stand out above your competition and other businesses.  Intrigue potential fans to want to become a fan of your business.

Add links, videos, and notes pages.  The more information you have listed the more appealing you will be to your fans and will increase the interaction on your page.

Continue to grow your fan base

You can start by befriending  people you know.  But keep these friends professional since this facebook page directly relates to your business.

Search on facebook to find more friends.  Facebook can help you find more friends through your existing email contacts.  Then search on keywords related to your business to find potential new friends that may be interested in your business.

Join groups that are related to your business.  You can do a Facebook search by industry, location and company name.  If there aren’t any groups in your industry start one.

Develop your presence

Join wall for forum discussions.  Comment on other walls.  This will help you establish your identity and visibility.

Make your wall interesting.  Update frequently with promotions, events, surveys or ask for feedback on your products or services.

Post comments/quetions on your wall that will get a discussion going with your fans.  For example “Who do you think will make it to the Super Bowl?”

Syndicate

Wherever possible link back to your website.  Sometimes your facebook page may get more views than your website so it’s important to link it back to your website whenever possible.

Link your Facebook page to other social networking sites like your Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Add a Facebook fan box to your website.  When people click on your fan book they will automatically become a fan without having to log in to Facebook

In the second part of 2009 Google will be launching a new product called Google Wave. One of Google Wave’s developers Lars Rasmussen describes the new product as, “what email would look like if it were invented today.” Google Wave is a real – time communication platform that combines email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management.

Software Engineering Manager, Lars Rasmussen comments: “Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.”

To Learn more about the Google Wave view the video below.

After developing a website for your business it is important for users to be able to find your website on the internet.  What is the point of having a website if no one can find it?  So how do you get found on the internet?  The best way to get a consistent amount of visitors to your website is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks,” the more searchers will visit that site. – Wikipedia

Optimizing your website will allow users to find you, help you stand out from your online competition and guarantee that you will get web traffic.  Increasing traffic to a website means more potential customers and more potential sales for your business. 

Matt Cutts from Google shares 5 SEO tips to help sites rank higher in the search engines.

1. Spotlight your search term on the page. If you want to be found for your keyword, make sure that term is on the page you want to rank. The term should be at the top as well as peppered throughout your copy.
2. Fill in your “tags.” The two most important tags are Title and Description b/c that’s what is displayed on the search results.
3. Get other sites to “link” back to you. This is one of the most important of the 100 factors Google considers when ranking sites
4. Create a blog and post often. This can help you get links. 
5.  Register for free tools. Cutts recommends using the tools at google.com/webmaster, as well as creating a text-based sitemap www.xml-sitemaps.com, and adding your business to Google’s Local Business center (google.com/local/add)

Internet marketing has become a hot new trend when advertising your business. We at Ads Next  pride ourselves on offering our clients with the best internet marketing solutions. Michael Burns of Ads Next states – “While currently providing our clients with complete internet marketing solutions, and while consistently following the current and upcoming trends in our industry, we are finding ourselves to becoming more and more fascinated and even focused on the importance of Video Marketing and how it can increase our clients page ranks…such as on Google, Yahoo or MSN…etc.  Just as inbound link building and site preperation are to internet marketing, Video Marketing is now becoming a staple for successful website promotion.

From most readings, especailly an interesting online article written by Terri Miller, it is becoming more logical to move into Video Marketing Productions, and by his thoughts will become a staple.

For instance, please read these quotes from Terri Millers blog:

• “This [online video ads] could very well become the dominant form of online advertising…probably within the next 18 to 24 months” – Bob Hanna, senor vice president of sales with Burst Media-a group that offers publisher sites to advertisers.

• “Online video ad spend is to surge by 89% in 2007 and is poised to grow and in 2010 will be worth around $2.9 billion”. – marketing vox.

It should now becoming more clearer that Video marketing will most likely become the “next big thing” in the world of Internet marketing.

Well what is Video marketing? Well most would say that Video marketing is the use of video for conveying your message to an audience while topics can range from business perspectives to personal grievances. Most experts believe that videos are more effective when it comes to establishing an engaging and interactive platform to communicate with the target audience. 

Video advertising is one of the basic forms of video marketing. In most cases of video advertising, the advertiser would make use of the video that is already being run across various television channels. Usually, a video is edited to shorten the duration. This also makes the video more appealing to the online audience. 

However, as Terri Millers blog describes, their can be many pitfalls when creating a proper Video marketing campaign. According to Amit I. Budhrani of Alza Management Institute, “Most advertisers feel that the content for a video advert can be borrowed from their own TV commercials. However, this is not the case. One needs to clearly differentiate between a video advert and an advertisement made for the TV. Video made for a TV can nevër replace video that is required for the Internet. And it will not make a good impression about the company in the eyes of the people since they can quickly make out that the ad has been copied directly from the TV. If this happens then one is likely to löse out on viewers since people will not care to view the ad of the company ever again. Hence the company will loose viewers instead of gaining them. And this will be a very big loss of opportunity.”

The growing popularity of such sites as YouTube has opened up one more avenue for advertisers, business houses and the corporate sector. One can place videos in social network sites. According to a report that appeared in Reuters, “YouTube, the leader in Internet video search, said on Sunday viewers are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its “snack-sized” video fare.”

Experts state that this particular form of advertising has not only great scope, provided the videos feature original content and are high on creativity, but will become a standard for an internet marketing campaign.

Wordpress and Blogger.com are two “self-hosted, blog publishing” software programs on the internet which allow users to posts various “blogs” and discussions on various articles, news or particular subjects. The word “blog” describes a website, which is usually maintained or taken care of by an individual that allows “entries” of comments, descriptions, reviews or any other materials to primarily complete a topic description/discussion. WordPress and Blogger are blog-services that are free, allow users to input text, and are community driven while supplying various privacy features.

In the beginning and for quite some time, blogging was more or less a means of keeping an online journal where individuals would keep a “running account of their everyday lives”. Most of these users called themselves journalist, diarists or journals. However, it was Peter Mernholz who is credited as creating the term “blog” out of the word “weblog”, created by John Barger. The term stuck as it was quickly “adopted as both a noun and verb (“to blog” meaning to edit ones page!).

Blogger (which is owned by Google) and Wordpress are two extremely popular and powerful blog publishing software programs. Blogger was created back in late 1999, and has been credited for “pioneering the format” and other various blogging tools to date. Wordpress first appeared in 2003, initially created by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little to create a “fork” of “b2”, then only later to have the blogging software come to fruition. Blogger was created to have a free format from the beginning, whereas Wordpress required an “invitation-only”, though this was primarily in the beginning and would eventually give way to over 3,500,000 individual blogs in the service. Registration is not required on both to read or comment on weblogs through the site, however registration IS required for an owner to own or post a weblog.

Wordpress is website that provides blog hosting free of charge. It is a multi-user program that allows thousands of blogs to be hosted on a single web server. However, the free hosting does not allow for any “plug ins” or themes, which many users can find irritating. These features may become available in the future as “payable plug ins” which would allow Wordpress to be comparable to traditional hosting pages. The biggest differences between Blogger and Wordpress can be summed up in one word, organization! Blogger, being one of the first and having an association with Google, enjoyed a great following of “bloggers” due to its timely inception and high end relationships and also because of its “toned down, easy to wield user interface”. It would allow for blogs to be edited in HTML, and it was also FREE!

However, as the site grew in popularity so did its content and the ways to/not too manage that content. That is when along came Wordpress. Wordpress offered a blog publishing program which in turn “organized” all blogs and articles, establishing categories for blogs, “blogstats” and an import blog feature so various blogs and articles from other sites (such as Blogger!) could be taken from and placed with ease into a Wordpress blog! Wordpress had also been able to give its participants a much more streamlined “dashboard” for which to navigate and create with. Users also rave about Wordpress’s ability to make “static pages” while providing specific links to a specific article/blog. And to top it off, though not the end of features is the ability to protect bloggers from Spam, or at the very least enough that they do not have to give constant attention to the issue.

Blogger, Wordpress and even LiveJournal are all blog publishing programs with their own audience and dedicated members. Blogger and Wordpress are more text driven, making them more popular when it comes to reviews, articles and such. Where the difference can be in the two major, text driven sites is the amount of organization and features which allow the user to create/expand his or her blog. From reading various reviews online, most come to the conclusion that Wordpress is the best for an “open ended” blog world, allowing an extremely user friendly interface with great organization and a growing list of features to come. Blogger too is also expanding its forum, with a revamped “dashboard”. Both are still free for the most part, so from what I read it comes down to which program you are both familiar and comfortable with using and researching.

I came across this article on ClickZ from Patricia Hursh and thought that she had some very good tips on optimizing a website for Local dominance in the search engine results.

Optimize for Local Search Queries

As with any SEO effort, basic optimization principles apply to local sites. Local marketers must engage in keyword research; develop relevant local content; write unique, compelling page titles and meta tags; implement search-friendly navigation; and build link popularity (to name just a few critical tasks).

But for local Web sites, two of the most important optimization steps a marketer can take are incorporating local search phrases across Web pages and properly utilizing contact information throughout the site.

Incorporate Local Search Phrases

Local keyword research is often less precise than a standard SEO effort. This is primarily due to language idiosyncrasies and local colloquiums. For example, if you own and operate a local shoe store, it’s important to know if searchers in your part of the country use the term “sneakers” or “tennis shoes” more often. If you run a bed-and-breakfast in Philadelphia, do people most often search for “Philly PA” or “Philadelphia”? People search for Minneapolis and St. Paul, but they also search for “twin cities.” They search for “downtown Chicago” and “the loop.” Make sure your Web site utilizes local speak and reflects the way your customers actually talk and search.

Once you’ve researched and identified target keyword phrases, use these local terms and phrases in page text, page titles, meta tags, link text, and other key places throughout the site.

Utilize Contact Information

A business’ address and phone number are instrumental for conducting business locally. But this contact information also provides a critical clue to search engines that a business is local in nature.

How to utilize contact information effectively:

• Display your full address with Zip Code on all appropriate Web pages.
• Include a local phone number, even when a toll-free number is available.
• Give your address and phone number extra prominence on the “Contact Us” page.
• If appropriate, provide information on areas served.
• Provide driving directions and a local map (perhaps on a page called “Directions/Location”).
• Consider placing contact information in the footer of every page.

Nationwide retailers, dealers, and franchises can create individual dealer locator pages optimized for local search queries and display each dealer’s local address as recommended above.

Increase Local Site Popularity

In-bound site links are critically important to improve local search visibility and results. As with any SEO effort, these links are more about quality than quantity.

If you belong to a chamber of commerce, local business association, or professional organization, request a link to your site. These organizations tend to have authoritative and popular Web sites and will typically link to you at no cost or for a nominal fee. If possible, provide suggested text associated with the link and include your target keyword phrases.

Check to see if there are local/vertical online directories or portals that are relevant to your business, such as FindLaw, a portal that provides legal information and helps people find appropriate lawyers in their area.

Dominate Search Results

Engaging in this simple three-step program may enable a small business to literally dominate a search results page. A local business now can show up in three separate places — all on the first page, and all above the fold:

• The main search results page.
• A local result inserted by Google or Yahoo at the top of the organic results (Google calls these One Box results and Yahoo calls them Shortcuts). According to MarketingSherpa’s recent eyetracking study, searchers pay more attention to the Google One Box listings than almost anything else on the page.
• A local PPC (define) ad.

Social Media Marketing – How does it help your website?

First we had brochure websites, then the buzz was database driven websites and cool Flash animations. Today, the most important aspect of your website is relevance. To achieve this relevance or popularity a site needs to be promoted to and respected by the internet community.

What is Social Media Marketing? It is the practice of using Web 2.0 sites and methods to drive additional traffic to your website. It refers to a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services- technologies such as blogs, social bookmarking, podcasts, RSS feeds (and other forms of many-to-many publishing), which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. The term became popular following the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004**.

As Aaron Wall writes, “the best way for search engines to provide relevant results is to emulate a user and rank the page based on the same things the user see and do (Do users like this website? Do they quickly hit the back button?), and what other people are saying about the document (For example, does anybody link to this page or site? Who is linking at it? What is the link text? And so on.)

As the Internet continues to grow the Search Engine Companies will need to weed out non relevant websites. They will looks for well designed websites with useful content that are frequently updated. They will look for quality links from trusted websites and track visitor behavior. Just like traditional business you need a virtual store that has a good reputation.