Facebook has recently made changes to make Facebook pages easier to use for small businesses. Let’s face it, setting up a Facebook page, can be a little confusing for some less savvy business owners.   When initially setting up a Facebook account for business purposes, many business owners don’t realize and set up a personal profile page.. We have seen that about 20% of SMB businesses that have registered for chatmeter and provided us with their Facebook URL have setup these personal profile pages. The problem with this is that only “friends” of this business can see the valuable posts, updates, feeds, and information that the business owner is providing.  Which means potential consumers are “out”…that’s not good.  Also these individual profile pages do not allow you to add your listing information (Name, Address, Phone Number), which can provide a valuable citation  (reference to your business and website from an external site…Facebook.) . These citations are  important because they provide more credibility, especially from a popular site like Facebook..

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There are two different Facebook pages that you should know about if you’re serious about social media marketing. First is the Facebook Fan page.  Any type of business can create a a business page that can be used to accumulate fans, post new status messages, and manage a variety of tabs like you see in the image below: Continue reading “Merging Facebook Places with Facebook Fan Pages” »

Facebook mobile now includes a feature that lets you to tell your friends when you are visiting a specific business location. Facebook calls this “checking-in.”  This means that you can use a smartphone device to receive a list of local businesses in your area and subsequently “check in” at the one you are frequenting.  This “check-in” is then visible to all of your friends through your newsfeed and a posting on your personal Facebook wall.  Businesses are taking advantage of this new concept and adding certain deals and specials that are available only to those people who have “checked in” to the specific location.  With a constant increase in the number of mobile Facebook users, we can’t help but wonder what effects this will this have on local SMB owners. Some of the early participants of Facebook Deals included 24 Hour Fitness, Alamo Draft house Cinema, American Eagle Outfitters, Chipotle, Gap, Golden State Warriors, JC Penney, McDonald’s, and Starbucks.  Gap was one of the first to advertise their Facebook Deals through commercials. The first 10,000 customers to “check-in” to the Gap location received a free pair of jeans.  This got people lined up at 8 am to take advantage of the Facebook Deal.

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The Video Helps Local Businesses in Understanding The Importance Of Local Search Outrank.com, a major source of local search engine placement services for small businesses, has announced the launch of a new online video. The video has all the required information about how important local search marketing is for many small businesses. ProfitFuel, a parent company of Outrank.com started in 2002. The company has been named as one of the Fastest Growing Companies in the United States by INC Magazine. By designing an optimized website which will rank highly in search engines, the company helps its clients to generate more sales. Outrank.com with its vast search marketing experience utilizes proprietary optimization techniques to get front page ranking in local search results.

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A great business can take years to build a positive reputation, but it can be destroyed almost overnight with a few bad reviews.  In the past, when people talked about your business, it was behind your back and you almost never heard about it.  Today, most of these dialogues are right in front of your own eyes. For better or worse, internet buzz is there for the entire world to see. There are an enormous number of review sites, forums, facebook pages and twitter feeds where your business is subjected to hearsay and rumor mongering! Reputation management has become an essential task for every business. But for many small businesses, it is overwhelming. There are over 20 high-traffic sites such as Yelp and Google Local where customers or disgruntled ex-employees may be posting reviews. How can you keep up with all the comments, reviews, and chatter about your business across the web?

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